"Gracious! what?" Grandmamma let her glasses fall off her nose in sheer horrified amazement. "What other?"
Hertha felt a sudden collapse of her heart-strings. She had to make energetic demands on her courage to be able to proceed.
"Can't it happen, dear grandmamma, that some one who isn't married to us, can get into his head ..."
"Hertha," interrupted the old lady, "look me straight in the eyes and tell me if you have been reading a forbidden book."
"How could I, grandmamma?"
"What are you reading now?"
"Oh, a yarn that Meta Podewyl lent me."
"We say story, not yarn. Who wrote it?"
"Felix Dahn."
"And what is it about?"