And he pulled me in and closed the door behind us, and then led me into a room in which the furniture greeted me as old acquaintances.
The old man pressed my hands, exclaiming over and over:
"How splendid we are looking! I believe we are bigger than ever. And how we must have been working to make our hands so hard! We have had hard times, eh? But we have held up bravely, that is the main thing. How long since we got out of that cursed hole?"
Thus the sergeant questioned me, and pushed me into an easy-chair; and he was quite indignant when I told him that I had already been over two weeks in the city.
"It is not possible!" he cried. "Two weeks without coming to us, and we have been expecting you every day! It is not possible! It is enough to turn a man into a bear with seven senses!"
"Every one for himself first, old friend," I said. "Suppose I had come here first of all, and Fräulein Paula had asked what the tall George was going to do?"
The sergeant scratched his curly gray head. "To be sure, to be sure!" he said. "Self is the man. With a woman or a girl, of course, it is quite different; and so one had to bring them away at once that they might have some one to rely on on the way, and here, upon first moving in, some one to look after things; for women are women and men are men. Am I not right?"
"Doubtless, Süssmilch, doubtless. So you have been here, of course, ever since?"
"Of course," said the old man, who had taken a seat opposite to me, but sat upon the extreme edge of the chair, as if to show that he knew how to keep within the bounds himself had fixed. "And apart from other things, can they ever get on without my head?"
"And without your hands?"