I know not why the adjective comfortable should so invariably be descriptive of mothers in Germany. In England and France though you may be a mother, you yet, I believe, may be so without being comfortable. In Germany, somehow, you can't. Perhaps it is the climate; perhaps it is the food; perhaps it is simply want of soul, or that your soul does not burn with a fire sufficiently consuming. Anyhow it is so. This mother had all the good-nature that goes with amplitude. Being engaged in feeding her child with belegte Brödchen—that immensely satisfying form of sandwich—she at once offered Priscilla one.
"No thank you," said Priscilla, shrinking into her corner.
"Do take one, Fräulein," said the mother, persuasively.
"No thank you," said Priscilla, shrinking.
"On a journey it passes the time. Even if one is not hungry, thank God one can always eat. Do take one."
"No thank you," said Priscilla.
"Why does she wear that black thing over her face?" inquired the child. "Is she a witch?"
"Silence, silence, little worthless one," cried the mother, delightedly stroking his face with half a Brödchen. "You see he is clever, Fräulein. He resembles his dear father as one egg does another."
"Does he?" said Priscilla, immediately conceiving a prejudice against the father.
"Why don't she take that black thing off?" said the child.