his wild scene, Bernd says. He has
suddenly leaped to the topmost top of popularity, for he's the
dispenser now of the great lottery in which all the draws are going to
be prizes. You know there isn't a German, not the cleverest, not the
most sober, who doesn't regularly and solemnly buy lottery tickets.
Aren't they, apart from all the other things they are, the _funniest_
people. So immature in wisdom, so top-heavy with dangerous knowledge
that their youngness in wisdom makes them use wrongly. If they hadn't
got the latest things in guns and equipment they would be quiet, and
wouldn't think of fighting.

Bernd made me promise to wait at Frau Berg's till he could fetch me,
and as he didn't get back till two o'clock, and Frau Berg very amiably
said I must be her guest at the well-known mid-day meal, I found myself
once more in the bosom of the boarders. Only this time I sat proudly
on Frau Berg's right, in the place of honour next to Doctor Krummlaut,
instead of in the obscurity of my old seat at the dark end near the
door.

It was so queer, and so different. There was the same Wanda, resting
her dishes on my left shoulder, which she always used to do, not only
so as to attract my attention but as a convenience to herself, because
they were hot and heavy. There were the same boarders, except the
red-mouthed bank-clerk and another young man. Hilda Seeberg was there,
and the Swede, and Doctor Krummlaut; and of course Frau Berg, massive
in her tight black dress buttoned up the front without a collar to it,
the big brooch she fastens it with at the neck half hidden by her
impressive double chins, which flow down as majestically as a
patriarch's beard. We had the same food, the same heat, and I'm sure
the same flies. But the nervous tension there used to be, the tendency
to quarrel, the pugnacious political arguing with me, the gibes at
England, were gone. I don't know whether it was because I'm engaged to
a Prussian officer that they were so very polite--I was tremendously
congratulated,--but they were certainly different about England. It
may of course have been their general happiness--happiness makes one so
kind all round!--for here too was the content, the satisfaction of
those who, after painful waiting, get what they want. It was expressed
very noisily, not with the restraint of the Koseritzes, but it was the
same thing really. The Berg atmosphere was more like the one in the
streets. Where the Grafin