With these words, spoken in great exasperation, the good natured, but somewhat choleric Doctor Stephen took his hat and went out at the door; but in the ante-room, the giant figure of Frederic had posted itself,--there was a dumb, questioning look upon his anxious face.--The doctor shook his head.
"Nothing is to be done with your master, Frederic!" he said. "Give him his usual medicine, it is the old complaint that has again"--
"Oh no, it is not that!" interrupted Frederic with great positiveness, "it is something entirely new, this time, and since that day when the American Miss"--
The doctor laughed aloud. "I hope you will not make the arrival of my niece answerable for your professor's illness," he said, greatly diverted at this juxtaposition of things.
Frederic lapsed into an embarrassed silence. This certainly had not been his intention; he only knew that both these incidents occurred together.
"Well, and how is it really with your master this time?" asked the doctor.
Frederic, greatly embarrassed, kept twirling his hat in his hands; a literal description of the circumstances that had so impressed him, was beyond his power of language. "I do not know--but he is entirely unlike himself," he persisted, obstinately.
"Nonsense," said the doctor curtly. "I must know that better. You give him the usual medicines, and then above all see that you get him away from his writing desk today, and out into the open air; but take care that for his especial recreation he does not pack a folio along with him. Do you hear?"
So saying, the physician went down the stairs, and when he had arrived there, asked for his niece.
"She has gone out," replied Frau Stephen in a very ill humor. "She went at four, and, as usual, alone. Speak with her, doctor, I implore you, once again, and represent to her the impropriety and adventuresomeness of these long, solitary walks."