Karl cast a distrustful glance sideways at my nursling and spoke not.
“I’m glad to see you,” pursued Eugen. “Why didn’t you come before?”
At that Karl’s lips began to twitch with a humorous smile; presently he too began to laugh, and seemed not to know how or when to stop.
“It beats all I ever saw or heard or dreamed of,” said he, at last. “That’s what brought you home in such a hurry every night. Let me congratulate you, Friedel! You make a first-rate nurse; when everything else fails I will give you a character as Kindermädchen; clean, sober, industrious, and not given to running after young men.” With which he roared again, and Sigmund surveyed him with a somewhat severe, though scarcely a disapproving, expression. Karl seated himself near him, and, though not yet venturing to address him, cast various glances of blandishment and persuasion upon him.
Half an hour passed thus, and a second knock was followed by the entrance of Frau Schmidt.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” she remarked, in a tone which said unutterable things—scorn, contempt, pity—all finely blended into a withering sneer, as she cast her eyes around, and a slight but awful smile played about her lips. “Half past eight, and that blessed baby not in bed yet. I knew how it would be. And you all smoking, too—natürlich! You ought to know better, Herr Courvoisier—you ought, at any rate,” she added, scorn dropping into heart-piercing reproach. “Give him to me,” she added, taking him from me, and apostrophizing him. “You poor, blessed lamb! Well for you that I’m here to look after you, that have had children of my own, and know a little about the sort of way that you ought to be brought up in.”
Evident signs of uneasiness on Karl’s part, as Frau Schmidt, with the same extraordinary contortion of the mouth—half smile, half sneer—brought Sigmund to his father, to say good-night. That process over, he was brought to me, and then, as if it were a matter which “understood itself,” to Karl. Eugen and I, like family men, as we were, had gone through the ceremony with willing grace. Karl backed his chair a little, looked much alarmed, shot a queer glance at us, at the child, and then appealingly up into the woman’s face. We, through our smoke, watched him.
“He looks so very—very—” he began.
“Come, come, mein Herr, what does that mean? Kiss the little angel, and be thankful you may. The innocent! You ought to be delighted,” said she, standing with grenadier-like stiffness beside him.
“He won’t bite you, Karl,” I said, reassuringly. “He’s quite harmless.”