He appeared incredulous at his unexpected good fortune. Was she positive? He knew from his tables and history of literature it was all right about Klopstock, but he shook his majestic head over the rest in grave doubt. Lilly eagerly set his mind at rest. It was more than a year since she had left school and had learned all these beautiful things, but her memory was good and she wouldn't tell him wrong. At last he seemed convinced. He breathed more freely, and remarked again, turning his mind to more common things: "Yes, Fräulein, life is hard, very hard."
Now that the ice was broken he recounted his likes and dislikes. Mathematics weren't bad, indeed he had got on very well with Euclid and geometry. But there were languages, and history, and, worse still, German composition. Alas! it was a troublesome world, enough to drive one to despair.
Lilly quite agreed with him. She, too, had little reason to be satisfied with the way the world wagged, and she expressed her thoughts about it with passionate eloquence.
"And how you must detest," she concluded, "to be hampered in your high ambition by the narrow limits of school life."
He looked slightly astonished and then said: "Yes, it's beastly."
"If I were in your place," she told him, "I shouldn't bother at all about dry facts and dull lessons. I should just follow my own bent, like the great poets and philosophers."
"That's all very well, my dear Fräulein, but there's the examination," he cried, horrified.
"Oh, never mind stupid examinations. It doesn't matter whether you get through them or not."
He became excited. "You don't in the least understand, Fräulein. Examinations are the entrance to every good position in life, no matter whether you stay at the university, study law, architecture, or go into the Civil Service. Not that I should dream of doing the last."
"I should think not, indeed!" she broke in. "A man like you!"