"Do say something, Robert," murmured Ingeborg. "Say how glad I am. Say all the things I'd say if I could say things."
Herr Dremmel gazed at his wife a moment collecting his thoughts.
"Why should one say anything?" he said. "She is a simple woman. No longer young. My wife," he said to his mother, "desires me to welcome you on her behalf."
"Ach," said Frau Dremmel.
Ingeborg began to usher her along the passage towards the back door and the garden. Frau Dremmel, however, turned aside half-way down it into the living-room.
"Oh, not in there!" cried Ingeborg. "We're going to have tea in the garden. Robert, please tell her—"
But looking round for help she found Robert had gone, and there was the sound of a key being turned in a lock.
Frau Dremmel continued to enter the living-room. Before she could be stopped she had arranged herself firmly on its sofa.
"But tea," said Ingeborg, following her and gesticulating, "tea, you know. Out there—in the garden—"
She pointed to the door, and she pointed to the window. Frau Dremmel slowly took off her gloves and rolled them together, and undid her bonnet strings and looked at the door and at the window and back again at her daughter-in-law, but did not move. Then Ingeborg, making a great effort at gay cordiality and determined that when words failed affectionate actions should fill up the gaps, bent over the figure on the sofa and took its arm. "Won't you come?" she said, adding a sentence she had taken special pains to get by heart, "liebe Schwiegermutter?" And smilingly, but yet, when it came to touching her, rather gingerly, and certainly with her heart in her mouth, she gently pulled at her sleeve.