or fiddling. Heaven knows where that little bit of luck came
from, seeing that up to now, though you're such a perfect listener, you
haven't developed any particular talent for playing anything, have you
mother darling; and poor Dad positively preferred to be in a room where
music wasn't. Do you remember how he used to say he couldn't think
which end of a violin the noises came out of, and whichever it was he
wished they wouldn't? But what a mercy, what a real mercy and solution
of our difficulties, that I've got this one thing that perhaps I shall
be able to do really well, I do thank God on my knees for this.

There are four other boarders here,--three Germans and one Swede, and
the Swede and two of the Germans are women; and five outside people
come in for the midday dinner every day, all Germans, and four of them
are men. They have what they call _Abonnementskarten_ for their
dinners, so much a month. Frau Berg keeps an Open Midday Table--it is
written up on a board on the street railing--and charges 1 mark 25
pfennigs a dinner if a month's worth of them is taken, and 1 mark 50
pfennigs if they're taken singly. So everybody takes the month's
worth, and it is going to be rather fun, I think. Today I was solemnly
presented to the diners, first collectively by Frau Berg as _Unser
junge englische Gast_, Mees--no, I can't write what she made of
Cholmondeley, but some day I'll pronounce it for you; and really it is
hard on her that her one English guest, who might so easily have been
Evans, or Dobbs, or something easy, should have a name that looks a
yard long and sounds an inch short--and then each of them to me singly
by name. They all made the most beautiful stiff bows. Some of them
are students, I gathered; some, I imagine, are staying here because
they have no homes,--wash-ups on the shores of life; some are clerks
who come in for dinner from their offices near by; and one, the oldest
of the men and the most deferred to, is a lawyer called Doctor
something. I suppose my being a stranger made them silent, for they
were all very silent and stiff, but they'll get used to me quite soon I
expect, for didn't you once rebuke me because everybody gets used to me
much too soon? Being the newest arrival I sat right at the end of the
table in the darkness near the door, and looking along it towards the
light it was really impressive, the concentration, the earnestness, the
thoroughness, the skill, with which the two r