“But, my good sir,” retorted the operator with emphasis, “they are not painted! From the door gaze you forth! What make you with this nonsense, that Brocken and vicinity are red painted?”
“Well, then,” I said wearily, oppressed by the magnitude of the task, “I don’t know how to word it myself, but you can fix it for me. Just say that I am going to paint them red—that will do just as well.
“But you shall not! It is forbidden!” exclaimed the official, holding himself like a poker, and glaring vehemence through his glasses. “It is strongly forbidden! When you one brush-mark shall make, quick to the prison go you. In Germany have we for natural beauty respect—also laws.”
Reluctantly, but of necessity, I abandoned metaphor, and in a humble spirit telegraphed in English to Uncle Dudley at his club that I was very glad. Even as my pen clung in irresolution on the paper over this word “glad,” the impulse rose in me to add: “Tired of Harz. Am returning immediately.”
“When the same here is,” remarked the operator, moodily studying the unknown words, “in Brunswick stopped it will be.”
I translated it for him, and added, “I go from here home, to be where officials their own business mind.”
He nodded, not unamiably, and replied as he handed me out my change: “Yes, I know: England. So well their own business there officials mind, that Balfour to Argentina easily comes.”
Walking up the hillside again, already quite captive to the fascination of the morrow’s homeward flight, I met at the turn of the path a family party—father, mother, and two girls in the younger teens—seated along the rocky siding, and gazing with a common air of dejection upon a portentous row of bags and portmanteaus at their feet. The notion that they were Hamburgers died still-born. Nothing more obviously un-German than these wayfarers was ever seen.
“I hope, sir,” the man spoke up as I approached, “that I am right in presuming that you speak English!”
I bowed assent, and even as I did so, recognised him. “I hope I am right,” I answered, “in thinking that I have met you before—at Mr Albert Grundy’s in London—you are the American gentleman with the Oboid Oil Engine, are you not?”