It is my step-mother's birthday, and trusted friends have been streaming up our three flights of stairs since quite early to bring her hyacinths in pots and unhappy roses spiked on wires and make her congratulatory speeches. I hear them talking through the open window, and what they say, wafted out to me here in the sun, sounds like the pleasant droning of bees when one is only half awake. First there is the distant electric bell and the tempestuous whirl of Johanna down the passage. Then my step-mother emerges from the kitchen and meets the arriving friend with vociferous welcoming. Then the friend is led into the room here, talking in gasps as we all do on getting to the top of this house, and flinging cascades of good wishes for her _liebe Emilie_ on to the _liebe Emilie's_ head. Then the hyacinths or the roses are presented:--'I have brought thee a small thing,' says the friend, presenting; and my step-mother, who has been aware of their presence the whole time, but, with careful decency, has avoided looking at them, starts, protests, and launches forth on to heaving billows of enthusiasm. She does not care for flowers, either in pots or on wires or in any other condition, so her gratitude is really most creditably done. Then they settle down in the corners of the sofa and talk about the things they really want to talk about--neighbors, food, servants, pastors, illnesses, Providence; beginning, since I was ill, with a perfunctory inquiry from the visitor as to the health of _die gute_ Rose-Marie. '_Danke, danke_,' says my step-mother. You know in Germany whenever anybody asks after anybody you have to begin your answer with _danke._ Sometimes the results are odd; for instance: 'How is your poor husband today?' 'Oh, _danke_, he is dead.' So my step-mother, too, says _danke_, and then I hear a murmur of further information, and catch the word _zart_. Then they talk, still in murmurs not supposed to be able to get through the open window and into my ears, about the quantity of beef-tea I have consumed, the length of the chemist's bill, the unfortunate circumstance that I am so overgrown--'Weedy,' says my step-mother. 'Would you call her weedy?' says the friend, with a show of polite hesitation. 'Weedy,' repeats my step-mother emphatically; and the friend remarks quite seriously that when a person is so very long there is always some part of her bound to be in a draught and catching cold. 'It is such a pity,' concludes the friend, 'that she did not marry.' (Notice the tense. Half a dozen birthdays back it used to be 'does not.') 'Gentlemen,' says my step-mother, 'do not care for her.' '_Armes Mädchen_' murmurs the friend.