"Veit Gronau!" exclaimed the doctor, delightedly, offering his hand. "Then you received our invitation in time. But why did you not let us know you had arrived, so that you might have come in the train with us?"
"I came by the way of Heilborn, and was just in time to receive you. I congratulate you, Benno, upon your share in this occasion."
"Yes,--a dinner for eighty people," sighed Benno. "Wolfgang thought it would be suitable for me to give a dinner to the party, and when Wolf takes a thing into his head one had best submit."
"He certainly was right this time," Gronau said, laughing. "As principal stockholder and director of the company you were bound to do something for the opening of the railway."
"If I only did not have to talk to everybody!" the poor doctor lamented. "And worse than all, I ought, he says, to make an after-dinner speech. I cannot. Wolfgang built the railway, let him make the speeches. He did, to be sure, speak to-day before we set out, and it was charming; every one was delighted,--his wife most of all. Does she not look exquisitely lovely?"
Veit nodded, but his face grew grave as he looked across at Erna. That beauty had driven another man to his death; Ernst Waltenberg would have given his hope of heaven for such a look as she was bestowing upon her husband at that moment. Gronau turned from such thoughts to ask after the health of Frau Reinsfeld.
"Oh, Alice is as blooming as a rose, and you must see our daughter." Benno's face glowed as he spoke of his wife and child. "You knew of----"
"Of your little one? Yes, you wrote me. I suppose you confine your practice entirely to your family now?"
"On the contrary, I have more patients than ever," the doctor declared. "When we are here in summer of course I attend all my old friends; and since I can now supply the poorer ones with all that they need----"
"Why, of course the honest Wolkensteiners continue to work you to death," Gronau finished the sentence. "But I must no longer detain you from your guests."