Still jocose, but as my hearers will notice, jocose with a tinge of grimness, I imparted these two linguistic facts to Edelgard, who shuddered and suggested renewed applications of the addressed envelope to the driver. “Also it is past dinner time,” she added anxiously. “I know because mein Magen knurrt.”
By means of repeated calls and my umbrella I drew the driver’s attention to us and informed him that I would stand no further nonsense. I told him this with great distinctness and the deliberation forced upon me by want of practice. He pulled up to hear me out, and then, merely grinning, drove on. “The youngest Storchwerder droschke driver,” I cried indignantly to Edelgard, “would die of shame on his box if he did not know every village, nay, every house within three miles of it with the same exactitude with which he knows the inside of his own pocket.”
Then I called up to the man once more, and recollecting that nothing clears our Hermann’s brain at home quicker than to address him as Esel I said, “Ask, ass.”
He looked down over his shoulder at me with an expression of great surprise.
“What?” said he.
“What?” said I, confounded by this obtuseness. “What? The way, of course.”
He pulled up once more and turned right round on his box.
“Look here——” he said, and paused.
“Look where?” said I, very naturally supposing he had something to show me.