"Why at last?" she asked.
"Have you forgotten that you promised to come six weeks ago?"
"When? I cannot remember."
"On the day after my mother's death you said you would come soon."
"Yes, yes; so I did. I have had a feeling there was something on my mind, I could not tell what. Yes, yes; that is it. But, dear me, you have no idea how fast one thing crowds out another in our house." Lenz felt a pang through his heart at Annele's light words.
But he had no time to analyze his feelings of pleasure and pain, for the ladies now began to exchange greetings. Annele seemed inclined to follow the city fashion and kiss the doctor's daughters,--those friends whom, however, she hated most cordially for the reserve that always appeared in their manner towards her. Amanda, the botanist, had taken off her broad hat, quite as if she were at home, and Annele followed her example. Annele's hair was more abundant than that of all the other ladies put together, and long enough to sit on. She held up her head, with its triple crowns of braids, and looked about her with an air of satisfaction.
Lenz put in a new barrel, and made The Magic Flute, which was generally rather grave, play the merry song of the Moors, "Das klinget so herrlich, das klinget so schön."
"H'm, h'm!" growled the landlord, and a long speech he made out of his growl, nodding his head the while, and drawing in his under lip, as if tasting a delicate wine.
"Very well," he added, after a pause, and spreading out both hands as he said it, as if he would literally be openhanded in bestowing his commendations,--"very well indeed." Those were weighty words, coming from mine host.
The landlady folded her hands, and looked admiringly at Lenz. "To think that such a work should be made by human hands, and by so young a man too! and yet he acts as if he were nothing more than the rest of the world. Keep so always; nothing becomes a great artist so well as modesty. Go on as you have begun; make more such works. You have a great gift, my word for it."