"Undoubtedly," said Herr Dremmel; and to Ingeborg, in English, "Kiss her, Little One, and we will go on home." He himself put his arm round his mother's shoulder and gave her a hasty kiss. "My wife is English," he said. "She does not yet either speak or understand our tongue. Kiss her, mother, and we will go on home." But it did not seem possible to get the two women to kiss. Ingeborg went another shy step nearer. Frau Dremmel remained immobile. "This," said Frau Dremmel, moving her slow eyes over Ingeborg and then fixing them on her son, "is a pastor's wife?" [Illustration: "You are married to her?" asked the elder Frau Dremmel, turning her pebble eyes slowly from one to the other] "Undoubtedly. I regret I omitted to tell you, mother, but one does occasionally omit." And, in English to Ingeborg, "She is a simple woman. Consequently--" "But I heard," said Frau Dremmel. "Through your housekeeper. And others. Thus I heard. Of my only son's marriage. I a widow." Ingeborg, not understanding, stood smiling nervously. She thought on such an occasion somebody ought to smile, but she did not like doing it. The immobility of Frau Dremmel, who moved nothing but her eyes, the dank bare passage, the rush of cold smell that had escaped out of the one door in it, the bleak air of poverty about her mother-in-law--poverty in some strange way regarding itself as virtuous for no reason except that it was poor--did not make her smiling easy. But she was a bride; just coming home; just being introduced to her husband's people. Somebody, she felt, on such an occasion must smile, and, trained as she had been by her father to do the things no one else wanted to do, she provided all the smiling for the home-coming entirely herself. "Please, Robert, tell your mother how sorry I am I can't talk," she said. "Do tell her I wish I weren't so dumb." "How much has she?" Frau Dremmel was asking across this speech. "Enough, enough," said her son, putting on his hat and making movements of departure. "Ah. I am not to know. More secrets. It is all to go in further unchristian tampering with God's harvests." Herr Dremmel bestowed a second abstracted kiss somewhere on his mother's head. He had not listened to anything she said for a quarter of a century. "Nothing for the mother," she went on. "No, no. The mother is only a widow. She is of no account. Yet your sainted father--" "Farewell, and God be with you," said Herr Dremmel, departing down the passage and forgetting in his hurry to get his bride home as quickly as possible to take her with him. For a moment she was left alone confronting her new relation. She made a great plunge into filialness and, swiftly blushing, picked up her mother-in-law's passive hand. She had meant to kiss it, but looking into her eyes she found kissing finally impossible. She shyly murmured an English leave-taking and got herself, infinitely awkwardly, out of the house. "One has to have them," was Herr Dremmel's only comment.