She evidently had become a little alarmed at the thought that her praises of the Germans might cause my sentiments to swing too far the other way. The second water-carrier was a barefooted and gaudy-looking lassie, who stepped along any old way and marked her track with frequent splashes of water from the copper vessels. “She is a wild Rumanian,” exclaimed my mother; “she can dance like a Vila, but she hates her job of carrying water. You will never find one like her in Berlin. The Germans have no use for people who do not love their daily duties.” My mother was a great admirer of the thrifty and industrious German colonists in Banat, whom she always recommended as models to the peasants of Idvor. When she heard my praises of Helmholtz and my confession of racial antipathy to the Germans she put up many powerful arguments which were most convincing. They had a wonderful effect. When I returned to Berlin from Idvor things looked more inviting, and my landlady remarked that I looked much more cheerful than I did a year before, when I arrived from Scotland. In another year, she suggested jokingly, I might look as cheerful as a real Prussian, particularly if I should succumb to the charms of a Prussian beauty. Remembering the promise that I had given to my mother about marrying an American girl, I said to my landlady: “Never! I have already pledged my word to one who is nearer to my heart than any Prussian beauty could ever be.” “Ach, Herr Pupin, you have changed most wonderfully,” exclaimed the landlady, and then she added in a whisper: “Just think of it! To get a confession on the first day of your return which I could not get before in nearly a year! I understand now why you were always so distant to the young ladies in my pensionat.” But the change of feeling, speeded up by my mother, and noticed by my landlady, was speeded up almost as effectively by another Serb. A Bosnian Serb with the name of Nikola had a fine cigarette shop on Unter den Linden, the principal avenue of Berlin. It was within a stone’s throw from the Imperial palace, and the highest aristocracy of Berlin patronized it. He was a rough diamond, and would stand no nonsense from any prince or count. If they found fault with his famous Turkish cigarettes he did not hesitate to tell them to buy them somewhere else. But he prospered, he said, because these German aristocrats never resented straight talk from man to man. He laughed at me, when I mentioned to him my suspicions and antipathies; and begged me to pass with him, from time to time, an hour or so in his store, and watch his German customers. I did, and profited much. The Prussian aristocrats had no racial antipathy against a Serb, if their apparently genuine affection for Nikola had any meaning. Nikola never left them in any doubt as to his pride of being a Serb.