Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

'Wander? Whereto?'

'Rose-Marie, there is a constant gnawing going on within me that will not permit me to believe that I have dined.'

'Well, but, Papachen, you have. I saw you doing it.'

'What you saw me doing was not dining,' said Papa.

'Not dining?'

Papa waved his arms round oddly and suddenly. 'Grass—grass,' he cried with a singular impatience.

'Grass?' I echoed, still more amazed.

'Books of an enduring nature, works of any monumentalness, cannot, never were, and shall not be raised on a foundation of grass,' said Papa, his face quite red.

'I can't think what you mean,' said I. 'Where is there any grass?'

'Here,' said Papa, quickly clasping his hands over that portion of him that we boldly talk about and call Magen, and you allude to sideways, by a variety of devious expressions. 'I have been fed today,' he said, looking at me quite severely, 'on a diet appropriate only to the mountain goat, and probably only appropriate to him because he can procure nothing better.'