“Paid for it!” I almost shouted. “Paid for it! You don’t mean that you have bought the book!”
“Calm thy troubled spirit! You don’t surely mean that you thought me capable of stealing the book?”
“You are hopeless. You have paid at least eighteen marks for it.”
“That’s the figure to a pfennig.”
“Well,” said I, with conscious superiority, “you might have had the whole three volumes from the library for five or six groschen.”
“I know. But their copy looked so disgustingly greasy I couldn’t have touched it; so I ordered a new one.”
“Very well. Your accounts will look well when you come to balance and take stock,” I retorted.
“What a fuss about a miserable eighteen marks!” said he, stretching himself out, and opening a volume. “Come, Sig, learn how the children of the world are wiser in their generation than the children of light, and leave that low person to prematurely age himself by beginning to balance his accounts before they are ripe for it.”
“I don’t know whether you are aware that you are talking the wildest and most utter rubbish that was ever conceived,” said I, nettled. “There is simply no sense in it. Given an income of—”
“Aber, ich bitte Dich!” he implored, though laughing; and I was silent.