He was exceedingly ruffled; for while he had been wrestling with these various acquiescences and evasions his real work was lying neglected out there in the sun, in there in the laboratory, and a whole day of twelve precious hours was gone for ever; and when Ingeborg said, "Who lives in that big white house?" Herr Dremmel, with his wasted day behind him, and the continued brassiness of the heavens above him, and the persistence in that place of trees of mosquitoes, stared at her a moment and then said, bringing his hand down violently on the table, "Hell and Devils." "Who?" said Ingeborg. "We must call on them at once." "What?" "My patron. He will be incensed that I have not presented you sooner. I forgot him. That will be another day lost. These claims, these social claims--" He got up and took some agitated steps about the table. "No sooner," he said, frowning angrily at the path, "has one settled one thing than there appears another. To-day, all day the poor. To-morrow, all day the rich--" "Do we call continuously all day?" "--both equally obstinate, both equally encased from head to foot in the impenetrable thick armour of intellectual sloth. How," he inquired, turning to her with all the indignant wrath of the thwarted worker, "is a man to work if he lives in a constant social whirl?" Ingeborg sat regarding him with astonishment. "He can't," she said. "But--do we whirl, Robert? Would one call what we do here whirling?" "What? When my work has been neglected all day to-day on behalf of the poor and will be neglected all day to-morrow on behalf of the rich?" "But why will it take us all day?" "A man must prepare, he cannot call as he is. He must," said Herr Dremmel with irritable gloom, "wash." And he added with still greater irritation and gloom, "There has to be a clean shirt." "But--" began Ingeborg. He waved her into silence. "I do not like," he said, with a magnificent sweep of his arm, "clean shirts." She stared at him with the parted lips of interest. "I am not at home in them. I am not myself in a clean shirt for at least the first two hours." "Don't let's call," said Ingeborg. "We're so happy as we are." "Nay," said Herr Dremmel, immediately brought to reason by his wife's support of his unreason, "but we must call. There are duties no decent man neglects. And I am a decent man. I will send a messenger to inquire if our visit to-morrow will be acceptable. I will put on my shirt early in order to get used to it. And I will endeavour, by a persistent amiability so long as the visit lasts, to induce my patron to forget that I forgot him."