Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. AnstrutherVon Arnim, Elizabeth
General
Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther
Von Arnim, Elizabeth
British -- Germany -- Fiction; Epistolary fiction; Germany -- Fiction; Love stories; Young women -- Fiction
Now was not that very pleasant? Hebe, the restorer of youth to gods and
men; Hebe, the vigorous and wholesome. Thoreau says she was probably the
only thoroughly sound-conditioned and robust young lady that ever walked
the globe, and that whenever she came it was spring. No wonder I was
pleased.
'Perhaps it's because I'm healthy,' said I.
'Is that it?' he said, obviously fumbling about in his brain for the
reason. And when he got to the house he displayed the results of his
fumbling by saying, 'But many people are healthy.'
'Yes,' said I; and left him to think it out alone.
So now there are two nice young women I've been compared to--you once
said I was like Nausicaa, and here a year later, a year in which various
rather salt and stinging waves have gone over my head, is somebody
comparing me to Hebe. Evidently the waves did me no harm. It is true on
the other hand that Papa Lindeberg is short-sighted. It is also true
that last night I found a beautiful shining silvery hair insolently
flaunting in the very front of my head. 'Yes, yes, my dear,' said
Papa--my Papa--when I showed it him, 'we are growing old.'
'And settled. And objective,' said I, carefully pulling it out before
the glass. 'And yet, Papachen, inside me I feel quite young.'
Papa chuckled. 'Insides are no safe criterion, my dear,' he said. 'It is
the outside that tells.'
'Tells what?'
'A woman's age.'
Evidently I have not yet reminded my own Papa of Hebe.
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
LII
Galgenberg, Oct. 28th.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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