'Oh no,' sighed Tante Else, 'it is I who am impatient and foolish.'
'I tell thee he is a barbarian. He always was. In the nursery he was, when, yet unable to walk, he crawled to that spot on the carpet where stood my unsuspecting legs the while my eyes and hands were busy with the playthings on the table, and fastening his youthful teeth into them made holes in my flesh and also in my stockings, for which, when she saw them, my mother whipped me. At school he was, when, carefully stalking the flea gambolling upon his garments, he secured it between a moistened finger and thumb, and, waiting with the patience of the savage sure of his prey, dexterously transferred it, at the moment his master bent over his desk to assure himself of his diligence, to the pedagogue's sleeve or trouser, and then looked on with that glassy look of his while the victim, returned to his place on the platform, showed an ever increasing uneasiness culminating at last in a hasty departure and a prolonged absence. As a soldier he was, for I have been told so by those comrades who served with and suffered from him, but whose tales I will not here repeat. And as a husband—yes, my dear Else, as a husband he has not lost it—he is, undoubtedly, a barbarian.'
'Oh, no, no,' sighed Tante Else, yet listening with manifest fearful interest.
'Ferdinand,' said my step-mother angrily, 'your tongue is doing what it invariably does, it is running away with you.'
'Why are married people always angry with each other?' asked Lieschen, the unmarried daughter, in a whisper.
'How can I tell, since I am not married?' I answered in another whisper.
'They are not,' whispered Elschen with all the authority of the lately married. 'It is only the old ones. My husband and I do not quarrel. We kiss.'
'That is true,' said Lieschen with a small giggle which was not without a touch of envy. 'I have repeatedly seen you doing it.'
'Yes,' said Elschen placidly.
'Is there no alternative?' I inquired.