“Why?” I repeated at length, keeping studiously calm. “What an extraordinary question. I could give you a thousand reasons if I chose, such as that I desire to bathe them; that hot water—rather luckily for itself—has no feet, and therefore has to be fetched; and that a wife has to do as she is told. But I will, my dear Edelgard, confine myself to the counter inquiry, and ask why not?”
“I, too, my dear Otto,” said she—and she spoke with great composure, her head bent over her mending, “could give you a thousand answers to that if I chose, such as that I desire to get this sock finished—yours, by the way; that I have walked exactly as far as you have; that I see no reason why you should not, as there are no servants here, fetch your own hot water; and that your wishing or not wishing to bathe your feet has really, if you come to think of it, nothing to do with me. But I will confine myself just to saying that I prefer not to go.”
It can be imagined with what feelings—not mixed but unmitigated—I listened to this. And after five years! Five years of patience and guidance.
“Is this my Edelgard?” I managed to say, recovering speech enough for those four words but otherwise struck dumb.
“Your Edelgard?” she repeated musingly as she continued to mend, and not even looking at me. “Your boots, your handkerchief, your gloves, your socks—yes——”
I confess I could not follow, and could only listen amazed.
“But not your Edelgard. At least, not more than you are my Otto.”
“But—my boots?” I repeated, really dazed.
“Yes,” she said, folding up the finished sock, “they really are yours. Your property. But you should not suppose that I am a kind of living boot, made to be trodden on. I, my dear Otto, am a human being, and no human being is another human being’s property.”
A flash of light illuminated my brain. “Jellaby!” I cried.