'Cool, then, as plain cucumber—this usually admirable stuff instead of, as we had expected, sending him gradually and pleasantly to sleep—I mean, of course, making him gradually and pleasantly so sleepy that thoughts of his bed, growing in affection with every glass, would cause him to arise and depart to his barracks,—woke him up. And, my dear Fräulein, you yourself heard—you are hearing now—how completely it did it.'
'Is he—is he—?' I inquired nervously.
The neighbor nodded. 'He is,' he said; 'he has consumed fourteen glasses.'
And indeed he was; and I should say from the tumult, from the formlessness of it, the tunelessness, the rollicksomeness, that never was anybody more so.
'I fear my son will leave us for some quieter spot before his holiday is over,' said the neighbor, looking distressed.
And perhaps it will convince you more than anything else I have said of the extreme value of our Johannas, when I tell you that, goaded by the noise and by his disappointed face to rash promises, I declared I would dismiss the girl unless she broke off such an engagement, and he stared at me for a moment in astonishment and then resignedly shook his head and said with the weary conviction of a householder of thirty years' standing, 'Das geht doch nicht.'
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.