“‘Into that silent sea,’” finished Minora hastily. “You can’t quote that without its context, you know.”
“But I wasn’t going to,” said Irais meekly; “I only paused to breathe. I must breathe, or perhaps I might die.”
The lights from my energetic friend’s Schloss shone brightly down upon us as we passed round the base of the hill on which it stands; she is very proud of this hill, as well she may be, seeing that it is the only one in the whole district.
“Do you never go there?” asked Minora, jerking her head in the direction of the house.
“Sometimes. She is a very busy woman, and I should feel I was in the way if I went often.”
“It would be interesting to see another North German interior,” said Minora; “and I should be obliged if you would take me.”
“But I can’t fall upon her suddenly with a strange girl,” I protested; “and we are not at all on such intimate terms as to justify my taking all my visitors to see her.”
“What do you want to see another interior for?” asked Irais. “I can tell you what it is like; and if you went nobody would speak to you, and if you were to ask questions, and began to take notes, the good lady would stare at you in the frankest amazement, and think Elizabeth had brought a young lunatic out for an airing. Everybody is not as patient as Elizabeth,” added Irais, anxious to pay off old scores.
“I would do a great deal for you, Miss Minora,” I said, “but I can’t do that.”
“If we went,” said Irais, “Elizabeth and I would be placed with great ceremony on a sofa behind a large, polished oval table with a crochet-mat in the centre—it has got a crochet-mat in the centre, hasn’t it?” I nodded. “And you would sit on one of the four little podgy, buttony, tasselly red chairs that are ranged on the other side of the table facing the sofa. They are red, Elizabeth?” Again I nodded. “The floor is painted yellow, and there is no carpet except a rug in front of the sofa. The paper is dark chocolate colour, almost black; that is in order that after years of use the dirt may not show, and the room need not be done up. Dirt is like wickedness, you see, Miss Minora—its being there never matters; it is only when it shows so much as to be apparent to everybody that we are ashamed of it. At intervals round the high walls are chairs, and cabinets with lamps on them, and in one corner is a great white cold stove—or is it majolica?” she asked, turning to me.