Then the nurse slipped out and called Herr Dremmel; and he, hurrying in
and finding her propped on pillows, holding his baby and smiling down at
him just as he had pictured she would, went down once more on his knees
beside the bed and took the whole group, mother, baby, and pillows, into
his arms, and quite frankly and openly cried for joy.
"Little sheep ... little sheep,..." he kept on saying. And Ingeborg,
having reached that point in convalescence where one never misses a
chance of crying, at once cried, too; and Robertlet beginning to cry,
the nurse, who laughed, broke up the group.
After that things grew better every day. Ingeborg visibly improved;
every hour almost it was possible to see some new step made back to her
original self. She clung to the nurse, who stayed on long after the
carrying into the next room stage had been passed and who did not leave
her till she was walking about quite gaily in the garden and beginning
to do the things with Robertlet that she had planned she would. She
seemed, after the long months of ugliness, to be prettier than before.
She was so glad, so grateful, to be back again, and her gladness lit her
up. It was so wonderful to be back in the bright world of free movement,
to be presently going to punt, and presently be off for a day in the
forests, to be able to arrange, to be in clear possession of her time
and her body. The deliciousness of health, the happiness of being just
normal made her radiant.
The September that year was one of ripe days and glowing calms. Neither
Herr Dremmel nor Ingeborg had ever been quite so happy. He loved her as
warmly as before their marriage. He found himself noticing things like
the fine texture of her skin, and observing how pretty the back of her
neck was and the way her hair behaved just at that point. She was the
brightest adornment and finish to a man's house, he said to himself,
independently busy with her baby and her housekeeping, not worrying him,
not having to be thought about in his laboratory when he wished to work,
absorbed in womanly interests, cheerful, affectionate, careful of her
child. It was delightful to have her sit on his knee again, delightful
to hear her talk the sweet and sometimes even amusing nonsense with
which her head seemed full, delightful to see her sudden solemnity when
there was anything to be done for the personal comfort of Robertlet.
"Aren't we _happy_," said Ingeborg one evening when they were strolling
after supper along the path through the rye-field, all the old
fearlessness and confidence in life surging in her again. "Did you ever
_know_ anything like it?"
"It is you, my little sun among sheep," said Herr Dremmel, standing
still to kiss her as energetically as though he had been beneath the
pear-tree in the Bishop's garden, "it is all you."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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