“Yes, no horrid waiters,” said our hostess.
“Waiters are so expensive,” said Edelgard.
“You wouldn’t see one,” said our hostess. “Only a nice child in a clean apron from a farm bringing eggs and cream. And you move about the whole time, and see the country in a way you never would going from place to place by train.”
“But,” said I shrewdly, “if we move about something must either pull or push us, and that something must also be paid for.”
“Oh, yes, there has to be a horse. But think of all the railway tickets you won’t buy and all the porters you won’t tip,” said Frau von Eckthum.
Edelgard was manifestly impressed. Indeed, we both were. If it were a question of being in England for little money or being in Switzerland for much we felt unanimously that it was better to be in England. And then to travel through it in one of these conveyances was so distinctly original that we would be objects of the liveliest interest during the succeeding winter gaieties in Storchwerder. “The von Ottringels are certainly all that is most modern,” we could already hear our friends saying to each other, and could already see in our mind’s eye how they would press round us at soirées and bombard us with questions. We should be the centre of attraction.
“And think of the nightingales!” cried Edelgard, suddenly recollecting those poetic birds.
“In August they’re like Germans in Italy,” said Flitz, to whom I had mentioned our reason for giving up the idea of travelling in that country.
“How so?” said Edelgard, turning to him with the slight instinctive stiffening of every really virtuous German lady when speaking to an unrelated (by blood) man.
“They’re not there,” said Flitz.