"I really ought not to stay here any longer than is necessary to bring up the dinner and afterward to carry down the dishes again," she said, with a roguish affectation of secrecy. "But my mother won't be on the watch to-day. She doubtless thinks I am making ready for the excursion, but Fritz won't be here before one. He has only obtained leave to be away for the afternoon, and has to come all the way from Moabit. Pray do tell me, Herr Walter, how can you bear to live as you do? But you are letting the soup get cold." She eagerly pushed toward him the dish, for which he seemed to have no special desire, and with the most charmingly officious coquetry she put the spoon into his hand. "To live so?" he repeated, smiling, as he ate the soup. "I don't know how a man could live any better. A dinner before me fit for a prince, while the sun shines on the green leaves before the open window, and the little hostess herself condescends to serve me--I should be a monster of ingratitude if I could desire anything better." "Oh! nonsense," replied the young girl shaking her head. "You are only joking, you know very well what I mean. Is it not almost two years since you have been out of the house? It would kill me to stay in the same place all the time." "Because you are a little wagtail, Reginchen. Or must I not call you that any more, now that you are eighteen years old? But I think you will retain all your life the same activity that you showed five years ago when we came here and when you carried my brother's books up-stairs one by one, to enable you to run up and down more frequently. Now jumping, you see, is not exactly my forte. But there is one peculiarity about the pleasures a man enjoys: if he can't pursue them himself, they are kind enough to come to him, and the happy hours that I have passed up here during the last five years cannot be counted." "Because, as mother always says, you are so moderate in your wants, and so contented with everything." "Oh! not at all, Reginchen. Your kind mother has a false opinion of me. On the contrary, I am very much spoiled, I am by no means contented with everything, and that is the very reason that I have no desire to go out among the crowd of rude, coarse people, who are nothing to me, to witness their self-torment in their endeavor to kill time, and to lose the consciousness of their miserable, paltry, joyless lives; how by means of bustle and fine dressing they try to appear to be something which they are not, and standing on a huge pile of thalers which they have scraped together Heaven knows how, attempt to pass themselves off as great men. And now compare my life with all that, Reginchen: constantly in the society of such a brother, possessing a few good friends, just enough not to forget that even the best of men are not Edwins, so well taken care of in such a pretty, comfortable house, with no anxieties, and--besides--"