George took a cigarette out of his case and offered one to Josef.
"Much obliged," said Josef as he took the cigarette and bowed while he clicked his heels together without any apparent reason; while he was giving the Baron a light he thought the latter was looking at him, and said apologetically, with an even deeper voice than usual, "Office jacket."
"Office jacket straight from the office," said Anna simply without looking at her brother.
"The lady fancies she has the ironic gift," answered Josef merrily, but his manifest restraint indicated that under other conditions he would have expressed himself less agreeably.
"Sympathy was universally felt," old Rosner began again. "I read an obituary in the Neuen Freie Presse on your good father by Herr Hoffrat Kerner, if I remember rightly; it was highly laudatory. Science too has suffered a sad loss."
George nodded in embarrassment, and looked at his hands.
Anna began to speak about her past summer-outing. "It was awfully pretty in Weissenfeld," she said. "The forest was just behind our house with good level roads, wasn't it, papa? One could walk there for hours and hours without meeting a soul."
"And did you have a piano out there?" asked George.
"Oh yes."
"An awful affair," observed Herr Rosner, "a thing fit to wake up the stones and drive men mad."