work is the
key to every happiness. Without it happiness won't come unlocked.
What do people do who don't do anything, I wonder?

Koseritz is only five miles away, and as he'll stay there, I suppose,
with his relations, he won't have very far to come. He'll ride over, I
expect. He looks so nice on a horse. I saw him once in the
Thiergarten, riding. I'd love to ride on these forest roads,--the
sandy ones are perfect for riding; but when I asked the Oberforster
today, after I got Herr von Inster's letter, whether he could lend me a
horse while I was here, what do you think I found out? That Kloster,
suspecting I might want to ride, had written him instructions on no
account to allow me to. Because I might tumble off, if you please, and
sprain either of my precious wrists. Did you ever. I believe Kloster
regards me only as a vessel for carrying about music to other people,
not as a human being at all. It is like the way jockeys are kept,
strict and watched, before a race.

Frau Bornsted gazed at me with her large serious eyes, and said, "Do
you play the violin, then, so well?"

"No," I snapped. "I don't." And I drummed with my fingers on the
windowpane and felt as rebellious as six years old.

But of course I'm going to be good. I won't do anything that may delay
my getting home to you.

The Bornsteds say Koseritz is a very beautiful place, on the very edge
of the Haff. They talk with deep respectfulness of the Herr Graf, and
the Frau Grafin, and the _junge_ Komtesse. It's wonderful how
respectful Germans are towards those definitely above them. And so
uncritical. Kloster says that it is drill does it. You never get over
the awe, he says, for the sergeant, for the lieutenant, for whoever, as
you rise a step, is one step higher. I told the Bornsteds I had met
the Koseritzes in Berlin, and they looked at me with a new interest,
and Frau Bornsted, who has been very prettily taking me in hand and
endeavouring to root out the opinions she takes for granted that I
hold, being an _Englanderin_, came down for a while more nearly to my
level, and after having by questioning learned that I had lunched with
the Koseritzes, and having endeavoured to extract, also by questioning,
what we had had to eat, which I couldn't remember except the whipped
cream I spilt on the floor, she remarked, slowly nodding her head, "It
must have been very agreeable for you to be with the _grafliche
Familie_."

"And for them to