But what terrible things caravans are when you have to share one with a person with whom you have reason to be angry! Of all their sides this is beyond doubt the worst; worse than when the rain comes in on to your bed, worse than when the wind threatens to blow them over during the night, or half of them sinks into the mud and has to be dug out laboriously in the morning. It may be imagined with what feelings I wandered forth into the chill evening, homeless, bearing as I felt a strong resemblance to that Biblical dove which was driven forth from the shelter of the ark and had no idea what to do next. Of course I was not going to fetch the hot water and return with it, as it were (to pursue my simile), in my beak. Every husband throughout Germany will understand the impossibility of doing that—picture Edelgard’s triumph if I had! Yet I could not at the end of a laborious day wander indefinitely out-of-doors; besides, I might meet the pastor.
The rest of the party were apparently in their caravans, judging from the streams of conversation issuing forth, and there was no one but old James reclining on a sack in the corner of a distant shed to offer me the solace of companionship. With a sudden mounting to my head of a mighty wave of indignation and determination not to be shut out of my own caravan, I turned and quickly retraced my steps.
“Hullo, Baron,” said Jellaby, still propped against my wheel. “Had enough of it already?”
“More than enough of some things,” I said, eyeing him meaningly as I made my way, much impeded by my mackintosh, up the ladder at an oblique angle (it never could or would stand straight) against our door.
“For instance?” he inquired.
“I am unwell,” I answered shortly, evading a quarrel—for why should I allow myself to be angered by a wisp like that?—and entering the Elsa drew the curtain sharply to on his expressions of conventional regret.
Edelgard had not changed her position. She did not look up.
I pulled off my outer garments and flung them on the floor, and sitting down with emphasis on the yellow box unlaced and kicked off my boots and pulled off my stockings.
Edelgard raised her head and fixed her eyes on me with a careful imitation of surprise.
“What is it, Otto?” she said. “Have you been invited out to dine?”