here, there are none anywhere any more, I believe. But he
has here distant cousins on his mother's side, and he doubtless wished
above all to see Schwantikow once more and the Belling house, to which
he was attached by so many memories. So he was over there the day
before yesterday and today he plans to be here in Hohen-Cremmen."

"And what does your father say about it?"

"Nothing at all. It is not his way. Besides, he knows mama, you see.
He only teases her."

At this moment the clock struck twelve and before it had ceased
striking, Wilke, the old factotum of the Briest family, came on the
scene to give a message to Miss Effi: "Your Ladyship's mother sends
the request that your Ladyship make her toilet in good season; the
Baron will presumably drive up immediately after one o'clock." While
Wilke was still delivering this message he began to put the ladies'
work-table in order and reached first for the sheet of newspaper, on
which the gooseberry hulls lay.

"No, Wilke, don't bother with that. It is our affair to dispose of the
hulls--Hertha, you must now wrap up the bundle and put a stone in it,
so that it will sink better. Then we will march out in a long funeral
procession and bury the bundle at sea."

Wilke smiled with satisfaction. "Oh, Miss Effi, she's a trump," was
about what he was thinking. But Effi laid the paper bundle in the
centre of the quickly gathered up tablecloth and said: "Now let all
four of us take hold, each by a corner, and sing something sorrowful."

"Yes, Effi, that is easy enough to say, but what, pray, shall we
sing?"

"Just anything. It is quite immaterial, only it must have a rime in
'oo;' 'oo' is always a sad vowel. Let us sing, say:

'Flood, flood,
Make it all good.'"

While Effi was solemnly intoning this litany, all four marched out
upon the landing pier, stepped into the boat tied there, and from the
further end of it slowly lowered into the pond the pebble-weighted
paper bundle.

"Hertha, now your guilt is sunk out of sight," said Effi, "in which
connection it occurs to me, by the way, that in former times poor
unfortunate women are said to have been thrown overboard thus from a
boat, of course for unfaithfulness."

"But not here, certainly."

"No, not here," laughed Effi, "such things do not take place here. But
they do in Constantinople and it just occurs to me that you must know
about it, for you were present in the geography class when the teacher
told abou