“Must, dear wife,” said I with returning gravity, “is a word no woman of tact ever lets her husband hear. I see no must why I, being who I am, should request an introduction to a Frau Pastor. I would not in Storchwerder. Still less will I at Frog’s Hole Farm.”
“But you are her guest——”
“I am not. I came.”
“But it is so nice of her to allow you to come.”
“It is not niceness. She is delighted at the honour.”
“But Otto, you simply can’t——”
I was about to move off definitely to the corner where Frau von Eckthum sat helpless in the talons of Jellaby when who should enter the door just in front of which Edelgard was wrangling but the creature I had last parted from on unfriendly terms in the church a few hours before.
Attired this time from chin to boots in a long and narrow buttoned-down black garment suggestive of that of the Pope’s priests, with a gold cross dangling on his chest, his eye immediately caught mine and the genial smile of the party-giver with which he had come in died away. Evidently he had been there earlier, for Edelgard as though she were well acquainted with him darted forward (where, alas, remained the dignity of the well-born?) and very officiously introduced me to him. Me to him, observe.
“Let me,” said my wife, “introduce my husband, Baron Ottringel.”
And she did.