“Eh, there is my pattern boy,” the cousin’s merry voice called out, and all the ladies giggled.
Then he was asked to sit down and was offered a cup of coffee.
“Mamma has gone to lie down a little,” Elsbeth whispered to him, “she is not quite well to day.”
“Isn’t she?” he said, and smiled in a silly manner Cousin Leo had gathered a circle of young ladies round himself, and told them a story about a young lawyer who had been so fond of sweets that, seeing a bag pralines which he was not allowed to have, he had been crystallized into a sugar loaf. They almost died with laughter over this.
“Oh, if only I could tell such stories,” thought Paul to himself and, as nothing better occurred to him, he ate one piece of cake after the other.
Ihe sisters had immediately been laid hold of by several strange gentlemen, they laughed boldly in their faces while the quickest repartees flowed from their mouths.
The sisters suddenly appeared to him like beings from a higher world.
“Now we are going to play a nice game, ladies,” said Cousin Leo putting one knee across the other, and leaning back negligently in his arm chair. “The game is called ‘Proposing.’ The ladies walk about singly and the gentlemen, too. The gentleman asks the lady he meets, ‘Est ce que vous m’armez?’ and the lady either answers ‘Je vous adore’—then she is his wife—or she silently refuses him. He who receives the most refusals receives a nightcap, which he has to wear during the rest of the whole evening.”
The ladies thought this game very amusing, and all rose to set to work directly Paul rose, too, though he would have liked best to remain in his dark corner.
“What can those foreign words be?” he asked himself, he would have liked to inquire of one of the gentlemen, but he was ashamed to betray his ignorance and so to disgrace his sisters. Elsbeth had gone away with the other girls, he would have liked best to confide in her.