“It’s positively immoral, this climate,” said Tay, shaking her hand vigorously. “How do people ever sleep here? Now I know why they drink so much beer—to keep their feet on the earth.”
“We’ll walk miles and miles.”
“So we will. Sorry I couldn’t keep my engagement with you for breakfast, but they fairly shoved that frugal meal into my bed. When we have walked a few hours, we’ll drop in somewhere and eat veal sausages and drink chocolate. That, I am told, is the proper stunt about eleven o’clock. Certainly in this climate one could digest the maternal cow between meals.”
They had been walking briskly, but paused at the Maximilianplatz. The closely planted trees and shrubs of the long narrow park were covered with ice and glittered blindingly in the bright winter sunshine. Even the tall houses on the further sides of the streets that enclosed it had icicles depending from the windows, glittering with the prismatic hues. Overhead soft thick masses of cloud hung below the deep rich blue of the sky. People were hurrying along in their furs, the shop-windows were full of color. A royal carriage passed, as blue as the sky, and an old man saluted his loyal subjects.
Tay whistled.
“Lucky for you it’s so hard to get married in a foreign town, or my promises might go up in smoke. This is just the place for a honeymoon.”
“Isn’t it? Let’s imagine we are just married and doing Europe for the first time.”
“You can do the imagining,” said Tay, dryly. “My imagination will take a well-earned rest for the present. We’ll return to Munich later.”
They wandered about the narrow crooked shopping district for a time, then up the wide Ludwigstrasse, almost deserted at this hour.
“Good clean street,” said Tay, approvingly. “And I like these flat brown old palaces. They look like Italy without suggesting daggers and poison.”