"Wait a moment, Tussmann. You're wet through, and look like I don't know what. Just let me wipe your face, at all events."
The Goldsmith took a handkerchief of dazzling whiteness out of his pocket, and wiped Tussmann's face with it.
The bright lights of the Weberschen Zelt were visible, shining brightly through the trees. Tussmann cried out, in alarm--
"For God's sake, Herr Professor, where are you taking me? Not into town? not to my own lodgings? not (oh, heavens!) into society, amongst my fellow-men? Good heavens! I can't be seen. Wherever I go I give rise to unpleasantness--create a scandalum."
"Tussmann," said the Goldsmith, "I cannot understand that ridiculous shyness of yours. What do you mean by it? Don't be an ass. What you want is a drop of something pretty strong. I should say a tumbler of hot punch, else we shall be having you laid up with a feverish cold. Come on!"
Tussmann kept on lamenting as to his greenness, and his Salvator Rosa face; but the Goldsmith paid not the slightest attention to him, merely hurrying him along with him at a rapid rate.
When they got into the brightly lighted coffee-room, Tussmann hid his face in his handkerchief, as there were still some people there.
"What's the matter with you, Tussmann?" the Goldsmith asked. "Why do you keep hiding that good-looking face of yours, eh?"
"Oh, dearest Herr Professor, you know all about this awful face of mine," Tussmann answered. "You know how that terrible, passionate painter young gentleman went and daubed it all over with green paint?"
"Nonsense," said the Goldsmith, taking the Clerk of the Privy Chancery by the shoulders and placing him right in front of the big mirror at the top of the room, while he threw a strong light on to him from a branched candlestick which he had taken up. Tussmann forced himself--much against the grain--to look. He could not restrain a loud cry of "Gracious heavens!"