"Well, you women can always manage a man if you only want to, don't you see? Just be really nice to him. It's all the same to me." And he left the room, much put out.
His pretty wife shook her head thoughtfully. What had he meant by "a bit nice"?
Going into the town on an errand she met the one-year volunteer. They walked part of the way together. Lisbeth had forgotten her embarrassment, and chattered away gaily.
Suddenly she remembered her husband's incomprehensible words, and she began, smilingly; "Do you know, Herr Trautvetter, what my husband has just been saying to me, that I was to be really nice to you. Have I not been nice then?"
"What did he mean by that?" Trautvetter asked sharply.
"Well," she laughed, "I ought to have taken back some more money to-day. But I never mean to do that again. And then he said that if I were only really nice to you, you would give me lots of money."
She started, so violently had the man struck his sword upon the ground, and he looked at her quite red and angry.
"Just like the low brute!" he cried.
"What! What do you mean?"
Trautvetter could not contain his wrath. He blurted out: "Don't you know, Frau Lisbeth, what he meant?--that you should take me for a lover!"