to go about, what a cheerful, tearless place the world would be. And you must forgive my vociferousness, but really I have had a woeful morning with Vicki, who cried so bitterly into the pages of my Milton that the best part of _Samson Agonistes_ is stuck together, and all the red has come off the edges. Papa Lindeberg came in at the end of the lesson to offer me his umbrella to go home with. 'It is a wet day, Fräulein Hebe,' said he, looking round. 'It is,' said I, gazing ruefully at my poor Milton. 'Even the daughters of the gods,' said he--thus mildly do we continue to joke together--'must sometimes use umbrellas.' 'Yes,' said I, smiling at this pleasant old man, this old man I thought at first so disagreeable; and he went with me to the door, and asked me in an anxious whisper what I thought of Vicki. 'It lasts long--it lasts long,' said he, helplessly. 'Yes,' said I, standing under the umbrella in the rain, while he in the porch rubbed one hand mechanically over the other and stared at me. 'You are a very fortunate young lady,' he said wistfully. 'I?' 'Our poor Vicki--if she were more like you--' 'Like me?' 'It is so clear that you have never known this terrible malady of love. You have the face of a joyful _Backfisch_.' 'Oh,'--I began to laugh; and laughed, and laughed till the umbrella shook showers of raindrops off each of its points. He stood watching me thoughtfully. 'It is true,' he said. 'Oh,' was all I could ejaculate; for indeed the idea made me very merry. 'No member of our sex,' said he, 'has ever even for a moment caught what is still a bright and untouched maiden fancy.' 'There was a young man once,' I began, 'in the Jena cake-shop--' '_Ach_' he interrupted, waving the young man and his cakes away with an impatient movement of the hand. 'I didn't know,' said I, 'that you could read people's past.' 'Yours is easy enough to read. It is shining so clearly in your eyes, it is reflected so limpidly in your face--' 'How nice,' said I, interrupting in my turn, for my feet were getting grievously wet; and you note, I hope, with what industriousness I preserve and record anything of a flattering nature that any one ever says to me. But you shall hear the other side too; for I turned away, and he turned away, and before I had gone a yard my shoelace came undone and I had to go back to the shelter of the porch to tie it up, and while I had my foot on the scraper and was bending down tying a bow and a knot that should last me till I got home I heard Frau von Lindeberg from the parlor off the passage make him the following speech: