“I hope, however, you speak German well enough to understand and join in general conversation, and to ask questions and obtain information, if necessary? It is unpardonable, people writing about the inhabitants of a country when they are incapable of conversing with them.”
“I understand it perfectly when it is spoken, and I generally contrive to make myself intelligible.”
“A little more than that is necessary; but, perhaps, you are too modest to boast of your proficiency.”
“I scarcely deserve to be called modest, although I am subject to occasional fits of diffidence. I believe I speak German with tolerable fluency, and only want opportunities of hearing and seeing. May I ask the name of the family with whom you were in treaty?”
“I heard of two families, either of them would have answered; but”—she hesitated.
“But what?”
“After everything had been arranged, and I was on the point of writing to your father, I found that only one member of the family wished for you, and that was the person who on such an occasion was of the least importance. I mean the gentleman. He wished for your society to have an opportunity of speaking English, but as he spent the greater part of the day in his office, and went out every evening, you would naturally have fallen to the lot of his wife; and, although I praised you as much as I could without knowing how you had grown up, she told me plainly that she should consider you a bore, and that I could not oblige her more than by breaking off our negotiations. Under such circumstances I had no choice.”
“And the other?” asked Hamilton.
“The other was a professor at the university. I wrote to your father about him, but never received any answer.”
“A professor! that does not promise much, nor would it answer my purpose. I should see little or nothing of domestic life.”