As he told her this, he settled the invisible tie under his upturned collar. No doubt he was wearing a gay token of maternal skill and maternal generosity.
Then, when she had expressed her condolences, she inquired with a slightly beating heart how Frau Asmussen was, and her daughters.
He made a sound with his lips as he answered: "They are very undesirable neighbours. The elder of the two girls has married a cashier, who is likely to lose his berth owing to irregularities. The younger has charge of the library, and the mother now drinks like a fish."
He related this in the same outraged tone in which he had previously alluded to Lilly's divorce.
"He is evidently still very proper," Lilly thought, with a sense of her own unworthiness and impropriety.
He was unhappy, nevertheless. She was sure of that.
And poor, very, very poor! Poorer than she had ever been in all her life. Who could say if he were not suffering the pangs of hunger now as he walked along beside her, shivering in his threadbare, shabby coat?
"Well, Herr Redlich," she said, "if your engagements will allow you, why not come to-morrow and dine with me?"
His engagements interfered most emphatically with his getting off in the middle of the day to change his clothes ... but if she wouldn't mind his coming as he was ...
"You may come just as you like," she cried with a laugh. "And you shall have your mother's potato soup."