CHAPTER VII.
“OH the cruel, the killing ill-luck that pursues us!” exclaimed the forlorn Madame Doppeldick, as her husband returned, with his mouth watering, to the little parlour, where, by some sort of attraction, he was drawn into the Captain’s vacant chair, instead of his own. In a few seconds the plumpest of Adam Kloot’s tender souvenirs, of about the size and shape of a penny bun, was sliding over his tongue. Then another went—and another—and another. They were a little gone or so, and no wonder; for they had travelled up the Rhine and the Moselle, in a dry “schiff,” not a “dampschiff,” towed by real horse-powers, instead of steam-powers, against the stream. To tell the naked truth, there were only four words in the world that a respectably fresh Cod’s head could have said to them, namely—
“NONE OF YOUR SAUCE.”
No matter: down they went glibly, glibly. The lemon-juice did something for them, and the vinegar still more, by making them seem sharp instead of flat. Honest Dietrich enjoyed them as mightily as Adam Kloot could have wished; and was in no humour, you may be sure, for spinning prolix answers or long-winded speeches.
“They are good—very!—excellent! Malchen!—Just eat a couple.”
But the mind of the forlorn Malchen was occupied with any thing but oysters; it was fixed upon things above, or at least overhead. “I do not think I can sit up all night,” she murmured, concluding with such a gape that the tears squeezed out plentifully between her fat little eyelids.
“I’ve found only one bad one—and that was full of black mud—schloo—oo—oo—ooop!”—slirropped honest Dietrich. N. B. There is no established formula of minims and crotchets on the gamut to represent the swallowing of an oyster: so the aforesaid syllables of “schloo—oo—oo—ooop,” must stand in their stead.
“As for sleeping in my clothes,” continued Madame Doppeldick, “the weather is so very warm,—and the little window won’t open—and with two in a bed—”
“The English do it, Malchen,—schloo—oo—ooop!”
“But the English beds have curtains,” said Madame Doppeldick, “thick stuff or canvas curtains, Dietrich,—all round, and over the top—just like a general’s tent.”
“We can go—schloo—ooop—to bed in the dark, Malchen.”
“No—no,” objected Madam Doppeldick, with a grave shake of her head. “We’ll have no blindman’s-buff work, Dietrich,—and maybe blundering into wrong beds.”
“Schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”
“And if ever I saw a wild, rakish, immoral, irreligious-looking young man, Dietrich, the Captain is one!”
“Schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”
“Did you observe, Dietrich, how shamefully he stared at me?”
“Schloo—ooop.”
“And the cut on his forehead, Dietrich, I’ll be bound he got it for no good!”
“Schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”
“Confound Adam Kloot and his oysters to boot!” exclaimed the offended Madame Doppeldick, irritated beyond all patience at the bovine apathy of her connubial partner. “I wish, I do, that the nets had burst in catching them!”
“Why, what can one do, Malchen?” asked honest Dietrich, looking up for the first time from the engrossing dish, whence the one-a-penny oysters had all vanished, leaving only the two-a-penny ones behind.
“Saint Ursula only knows!” sighed Madame Doppeldick, her voice relapsing into its former tone of melancholy. “I only know that I will never undress in the room!”
“Then you must undress out of it, Malchen. Schloo—oop. Schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”
“I believe that must be the way after all,” said Madame Doppeldick, on whose mind her husband’s sentence of transcendental philosophy had cast a new light. “To be sure there is a little landing-place at the stair-head, and our bed is exactly opposite the door—and if one scuttled briskly across the room, and jumped in—But are you sure, Dietrich, that you explained every thing correctly to the Captain? Did you tell him that his was the one next the window—with the patchwork coverlet?”
“Not a word of it!” answered honest Dietrich, who like all other Prussians had served his two years as a soldier, and was therefore moderately interested in military manœuvres. “Not a word of it—we talked all about the review. But I did what was far better, my own Malchen, for I saw him get into the bed with the patchwork coverlet, with my own eyes, and then took away his candle—Schloo—oo—oop!”
“It was done like my own dear, kind Dietrich,” exclaimed the delighted Madame Doppeldick, and in the sudden revulsion of her feelings, she actually pulled up his huge round bullet-head from the dish, and kissed him between the nose and chin.
The Domestic Dilemma was disarmed of its horns, Madame Doppeldick saw her way before her, as clear and open as the Rhine three months after the ice has broken up. From that moment, as long as the dish contained two oysters, the air of “Schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop” was sung, as “arranged for a duet.”