“Don’t get excited,” I replied. “I am not objecting; I respect you for it.”
He recovered his temper, and went on:
“There were four in the window, if you remember, all very much alike, and each one labelled in plain figures twenty marks. I don’t pretend to speak German fluently, but I can generally make myself understood with a little effort, and gather the sense of what is said to me, provided they don’t gabble. I went into the shop. A young girl came up to me; she was a pretty, quiet little soul, one might almost say, demure; not at all the sort of girl from whom you would have expected such a thing. I was never more surprised in all my life.”
“Surprised about what?” I said.
George always assumes you know the end of the story while he is telling you the beginning; it is an annoying method.
“At what happened,” replied George; “at what I am telling you. She smiled and asked me what I wanted. I understood that all right; there could have been no mistake about that. I put down a twenty mark piece on the counter and said:
“Please give me a cushion.”
“She stared at me as if I had asked for a feather bed. I thought, maybe, she had not heard, so I repeated it louder. If I had chucked her under the chin she could not have looked more surprised or indignant.
“She said she thought I must be making a mistake.
“I did not want to begin a long conversation and find myself stranded. I said there was no mistake. I pointed to my twenty mark piece, and repeated for the third time that I wanted a cushion, ‘a twenty mark cushion.’