'Her husband is a farmer,' I heard Charlotte say in the dreary voice of
hopeless boredom.
'Oh, really. How interesting,' said Mrs. Harvey-Browne; and immediately
ceased to be interested.
The lights of Sassnitz twinkled on the other side of the bay. A steamer
came across the calm grey water, gaily decked out in coloured lights,
the throbbing of her paddle-wheels heard almost from the time she left
Sassnitz in the still evening air. Up and down the road between our
tables and the sea groups of bath-guests strolled--artless family
groups, papa and mamma arm in arm, and in front the daughter and the
admirer; knots of girls in the _backfisch_ stage, tittering and pushing
each other about; quiet maiden-ladies, placid after their supper, gently
praising, as they passed, the delights of a few weeks spent in the very
bosom of Nature, expatiating on her peace, her restfulness, and the
freshness of her vegetables. And with us, while the stars flashed
through the stirring beech leaves, Mrs. Harvey-Browne rhapsodised about
the great Nieberlein to the blank Charlotte, and Brosy tried to carry on
a reasonable conversation about things like souls with a woman who was
eating an omelette.
I was in an entirely different mood from the one of the afternoon at
Vilm, and it was a mood in which I like to be left alone. When it is on
me not all the beautiful young men in the world, looking like archangels
and wearing the loveliest linen, would be able to shake me out of it.
Brosy was apparently in exactly the same mood as he had been then. Was
it his perennially? Did he always want to talk about the Unknowable, and
the Unthinkable, and the Unspeakable? I am positive I did not look
intelligent this time, not only because I did not try to, but because I
was feeling profoundly stupid. And still he went on. There was only one
thing I really wanted to know, and that was why he was called Brosy.
While I ate my supper, and he talked, and his mother listened during the
pauses of her fitful conversation with Charlotte, I turned this over in
my mind. Why Brosy? His mother kept on saying it. To Charlotte her talk,
having done with Nieberlein, was all of Brosy. Was it in itself a
perfect name, or was it the short of something long, or did it come
under the heading Pet? Was he perhaps a twin, and his twin sister was
Rosy? In which case, if his parents were lovers of the neat, his own
name would be almost inevitable.
It was when our supper had be
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