Even to that exclamation, a quite new one in a quite new voice, they said nothing, but waited patiently for what would no doubt happen next.
CHAPTER XXVI
What happened next was that they went to school.
Just as Ingeborg was beginning to ask herself rather shy questions—for she was very full of respects—about the value of education and the claims of free development, the State stepped in and swept Robertlet and Ditti away from her into its competent keeping. In an instant, so it seemed to her afterward when in the empty house she had nothing to do but put away their traces, she was bereft.
"You never told me this is what happens to mothers," she said to Herr Dremmel the day the brief order from the Chief Inspector of Schools arrived.
Herr Dremmel, who was annoyed that he should have forgotten his parental and civic duties, and still more annoyed, it being April and his fields needing much attention as a new-born infant, or a young woman one wishes, impelled by amorous motives, to marry, that there should be parental and civic duties to forget, was short with her.
"Every German of six has to be educated," he said.
"But they are being educated," said Ingeborg, her mind weighted with all she herself had learned.
He waved her aside.