ep--at
_least_ till six; should not you, Gertrud?'

'It is very probable,' said Gertrud; and went away to give the order.

August did. He slept so heavily that eight o'clock found the Professor
and myself still at Glowe, breakfasting at a little table in the road
before the house on flounders and hot gooseberry jam. The Professor was
much calmer, quite composed in fact, and liked the flounders, which he
said were as fresh as young love. He had been very tired after his long
day and the previous sleepless night, and when he found I was immovable
he too had gone to bed and overslept himself Immediately on seeing him
in the morning I told him what I felt sure was true--that Charlotte,
knowing I would come to Arkona in the course of my drive round the
coast, had gone on there to wait for me. 'So there is really no hurry,'
I added.

'Hurry? certainly not,' he said, gay and reasonable after his good
night. 'We will enjoy the present, little cousin, and the admirable
flounders.' And he told me the story of the boastful man who had vaunted
the loftiness of his rooms to a man poorer than himself except in wit;
and the poorer man, weary of this talk of ceilings, was goaded at last
to relate how in his own house the rooms were so low that the only
things he could ever have for meals were flounders; and though I had
heard the story before I took care to exhibit a decent mirth in the
proper place, ending by laughing with all my heart only to see how the
Professor laughed and wiped his eyes.

It was a close day of sunless heat. The sky was an intolerable grey
glare. There was no wind, and the flies buzzed in swarms about the
horses' heads as we drove along the straight white road between the
pines towards Arkona. Gertrud was once more relegated to a cart, but she
did not look nearly so grim as before; she obviously preferred the
Professor to his wife, which was a lapse from the normal discretion of
her manners, Gertruds not being supposed to have preferences, and
certainly none that are obvious.

From Glowe the high road goes through the pines almost without a bend to
the next place, Juliusruh, about an hour and a half north of Glowe. We
did not pass a single house. The way was absolutely lonely, and its
stuffiness dreadful. We could see neither the Baltic nor the Bodden,
though both were only a few yards off on the other side of the pines. At
Juliusruh, a flat, airless place of new lodging-houses, we did get a
glimpse of a mud