‘It gives us the greatest pleasure to see you once more in our circle,’ he said emphatically.
Frau von Sigmundskron looked up from her fine needlework, and gracefully inclined her head.
‘You are very kind,’ she answered. ‘You know how happy we are to be with you.’
‘Ah, it is too, too delightful!’ cried Frau von Greifenstein, with sudden enthusiasm, covering the toy terrier with her hand at the same time, as though anticipating some nervous movement on his part at the sound of her voice. The dog stirred uneasily and uttered a feeble little growl, turned round on her lap, bit his tail, and then settled himself to rest again. The lady watched all these movements with anxious interest, smoothing the folds of her dress at the spot on which the beast was about to lay his head.
‘Ah! my beloved, my treasure!’ she murmured in a strident whisper. ‘Did I wake you! Dear, dear Pretzel! Do go to sleep! I call him Pretzel,’ she added, looking up with a wild smile, ‘because when he is curled up, with his little legs together, on his side, he is just the shape of those little twisted rolls my husband likes with his beer. It is a vulgar name, yes—but this is a vulgar age, dear cousin, you know, and we must not be behind our times!’
‘Is it?’ asked Frau von Sigmundskron without taking her eyes from her work.
‘Oh, dreadfully so! Is it not, Hugo? I am sure I have heard you say so.’
‘Without doubt, the times are changed,’ replied Greifenstein. ‘But I suppose that what is modern will always seem vulgar to old-fashioned people.’
‘Ah, you do not call me old-fashioned, dear husband? Do you? Really, if I am old-fashioned, the times must have advanced very, very quickly! Eh? Dearest cousin, he calls us old-fashioned! You and me! Aber nein! How is it possible!’
A fit of spasmodic, unnatural laughter shook her from the tip of her lace parasol to the toes of her small slippers, causing such a convulsion in the lap-dog’s mind that he sat up on her knees and joined his cries with hers, until he had succeeded in attracting her attention, when he was instantly caressed and kissed and petted, with expressions of the greatest anxiety for his comfort. In about thirty seconds, however, the noises suddenly ceased, Pretzel went to sleep again and his mistress sat looking at the swallows and the flitting butterflies, her weary features expressing nothing that could be connected with mirth, any more than if she had not laughed for years. The repose could not last long, but Greifenstein felt that it was refreshing. In five and twenty years of married life, by dint of never exhibiting any annoyance at his wife’s way of expressing herself, he had grown hardened against the disturbing effect of her smile and voice until he was really very little affected by either. So far as her conduct was concerned, he had never had anything to complain of, and since he had chosen her of his own free will, he considered that one part of his duty consisted in suffering her eccentricities with patience and calm. The idea that a German who called himself a gentleman should not do his duty never entered his mind. On the other hand, his imperturbable manner sometimes irritated his wife, and in justice to her it must be allowed that his conversation in her presence was often very constrained.