"I walked, I sailed, I bathed, I lay in the sun, and I made resolutions." "Excellent. I shall await the result with interest." "I hope you'll like them. I know they'll be very good for the children." She had so earnest a face that he pulled it round by the chin and peered at it. Seen close she was always prettiest, full of delicacy and charm of soft fair skin, and after examining her a moment with a pleased smile he stooped down and did, after all, kiss her. She flushed and resisted. "What?" he said, amused. "The little wife growing virginal again?" "You've made my hat crooked," she said, putting up her hands to straighten it. "Robert, how are the fields?" "I will not talk about the fields. I will talk about you." "Oh, Robert. You know," she added nervously, "I'm not _really_ well yet. I've still got to go on taking tiresome things--that tonic, you know. The doctor there said I'm still anæmic--" "We will feed her on portions of the strongest ox." "So you mustn't mind, if I--if I--" "I mind nothing if only I once more have my little wife at home," said Herr Dremmel; and when he helped her down on to the parsonage steps, where stood Robertlet and Ditti in a stiff and proper row waiting motionless till their mother should have got near enough for them to present her with the nosegays they were holding, he kissed her again, and again pinched her ear, and praised God aloud that his widowerhood was over. They had tea, a meal that had long before been substituted for the heavier refreshment of coffee, in a parlour filled with flowers by Rosa and the cook, the very cake, baked for the occasion, being strewn with them. Herr Dremmel lounged on the sofa behind the table looking placidly content, with one arm round his wife, while Robertlet and Ditti, awed by the splendours of the decorations for their mother's home-coming and their own best clothes and spotless bibs, sat opposite, being more completely good than ever. From their side of the table they stared unflinchingly at the two people on the sofa--at their comfortably reclining, pleased-looking father, whom they knew so differently as a being always hurriedly going somewhere else, at their mother sitting up very straight, with her veil pushed up over her nose, pouring out tea and smiling at them and keeping on giving them more jam and more milk and more cake even after, aware from their sensations that overflowing could not be far off, they had informed her by anxious repetitions of the word _satt_, which she did not seem to hear, that they were already in a dangerous condition. And they wondered dimly why, when she poured out the tea, her hand shook and made it spill. "I will now," said Herr Dremmel when the meal was finished, getting up and brushing crumbs out of the many folds that were characteristic of his clothes, "retire for a space into my laboratory."