Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

'Not married yet?' she asked as we shook hands, smiling as though the joke were good.

I smiled with an equal conviction of its goodness, and said I was not.

'Not even engaged?'

'Not even engaged,' said I, smiling more broadly, as if infinitely tickled.

'You must be quick,' said she.

I admitted the necessity by a nod.

'You are twenty-six—I know your age because poor Emilie'—Emilie was my step-mother—'was married ten years, and when she married you were sixteen. Twenty-six is a great age for a girl. When I was your age I had already had four children. What do you think of that?'

I didn't know what to think of it, so smiled vaguely, and turning to the waiting machine at the desk began my list. 'Hard-working, clean, honest—'

'Yes, yes, if we could but find such treasures,' interrupted Frau Meyer with a reverberating sigh. 'Here am I engaged to give the first coffee-party of the season—'

'What, in summer?'