The ladies, fingering dusty Tauchnitzes and magazines and eyeing the table in the window with heads as much averted as could be combined with the seeing of it, gradually found the shock they had had being soothed by the interest they felt in what Herr Dremmel would do when he realised that that unladylike Miss Bullivant, all unaware of what was waiting for her, was not coming. Now that they were there they might as well stay and see the end of it. It was really very interesting in its way; so German; so unlike, thank goodness, what English people ever did. Would he stand there all day, they wondered, with that really most improperly suggestive cake, so very like a christening cake? One or two of them sat down squarely on the sofas behind months-old magazines round whose edges they peeped, making it clear to the unhappy man that they, at least, intended to stay there; and they all coughed a little every now and then in the way a waiting congregation coughs in church. Then the door was pushed open with the jerk of somebody who is either in a hurry or has come to a sudden determination, and who should appear but that Miss Bullivant. A thrill ran through the seven ladies, and they instantly became, behind their magazines, stiff with excitement. Chance; what a chance; she had chanced to look in; it was like a play; dear me, thought each of the seven. And Ingeborg, who believed as lately as the last moment on the doormat outside that she had only come in order to tell Herr Dremmel she was not coming, when she saw the cake, very white and bridal, on a white cloth with white flowers in pots round it, and on either side of it a bottle with a white ribbon about its neck, and on the other for the sake of symmetry two glasses, was staggered. How could she, who so much loved to please, to make happy, cruelly hurt him, spoil his little feast, wipe out the glow, the immense relief that beamed from his face when he saw her? She turned round quickly, realising the presence of the seven ladies. Amazed she stared at them, mechanically counting them. How could she make him ridiculous, humiliate him, before all those women? Hesitating, torn, poised on the tip of flight, she stood there. Her hand was on the door to open it again and run; but Herr Dremmel's simplicity came to his help more effectually than the cunningest plans. He forgot the ladies, and stepping forward took her hand in his and quite simply kissed her forehead, sealing her then and there, with the perfect frankness of his countrymen when engaged in legitimate courtship, as his betrothed. He then slipped a ring he wore on his little finger on to her thumb, that being the only bit of her hand he could find that it would stay on, and he being free from prejudices in the matter of fingers, and the thing--at least so he supposed--was done.