“It is one of my mental tricks,” I said, my gaze however contracting sternly as it fell on Edelgard’s approaching form.
“Oh,” said she.
Certainly she is a quiet lady. But how stimulating. Her solitary oh’s are more packed with expressiveness than other women’s hour-long tirades.
She too was watching Edelgard coming toward us across the sun-beaten bit of road, her head slightly turned away from me but not so much that I could not see she was smiling at my wife. Of course she must have been amused at such a slavish imitation; but with her usual kindness she made room on the bench for her and, without alluding to the transformation, suggested refreshment.
Edelgard as she sat down shot a very curious glance at me round the corner of her head-wrappings. I was surprised to see little that could be called apology in her way of sitting down, and looked in vain for the red spot that used to appear on each cheek at home when she was aware that she had done wrong and that it was not going to be passed over. She was sheltered from immediate steps on my part by Frau von Eckthum who sat between us, and when Jellaby approached her with a glass of milk she actually took it without so much as breathing the honest word beer.
This was too much. I threw back my head and laughed as heartily as I have ever seen a man laugh. Edelgard and milk! Why, I do not believe she had drunk it pure like that since the day she parted from the last of her infancy’s bottles. Edelgard becoming squeamish; Edelgard posing—and what a pose; good heavens, what a pose! Edelgard, one of Prussia’s daughters, one of Prussia’s noblemen’s daughters, accepting milk instead of beer, and accepting it at the hands of a Socialist in shirt sleeves. A vision of Storchwerder’s face if it could see these things rose before me. Of course I laughed. Not, mind you, without some slight tinge of bitterness, for laughter may be bitter and hearty at the same time, but on the whole I think I did credit to my unfailing sense of humour in spite of very great provocation, and I laughed till even the horses pricked up their ears and turned their heads and stared.
Nobody else smiled. On the contrary—it cannot be true that laughter is infectious—they watched me with a serious, amusingly serious, surprise. Edelgard did not watch. She knew better than that. Carefully she concealed her face in the milk, feeling no doubt it was the best place for it, and unable to leave off drinking the stuff because of the problem of how to meet my eyes once she did. Frau von Eckthum regarded me with much the same attentive interest she had
Edelgard posing—and what a pose; good heavens, what a pose!