Minna is related to Frau
Knapf, whom I have never seen. Minna is inordinately
fond of dress, and her remarks anent my own garments are
apt to be a trifle disconcerting, especially when she
intersperses her recital of dinner dishes with admiring
adjectives directed at my blouse or hat. Thus:
"Wir haben roast beef, und spareribs mit Sauerkraut,
und schicken--ach, wie schon, Frau Orme! Aber ganz
prachtvoll!" Her eyes and hands are raised toward
heaven.
"What's prachtful? " I ask, startled. "The
chicken?"
"Nein; your waist. Selbst gemacht?"
I am even becoming hardened to the manners of the
aborigines. It used to fuss me to death to meet one of
them in the halls. They always stopped short, brought
heels together with a click, bent stiffly from the waist,
and thundered: "Nabben', Fraulein!"
I have learned to take the salutation quite calmly,
and even the wildest, most spectacled and knobby-browed
aborigine cannot startle me. Nonchalantly I reply,
"Nabben'," and wish that Norah could but see me in the
act.
When I told Ernst von Gerhard about them, he laughed
a little and shrugged his shoulders and said:
"Na, you should not look so young, and so pretty, and
so unmarried.
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