“You haf one zong in your language what calls itself, ‘Not always Mai,’ haf you not?”
“Yes,” said I, and all the boys began to giggle as if something clever had been said. Taken all in all, what tortures have I not suffered from those dreadful boys. Shy when they ought to have been bold, and bold where a modest retiringness would better have become them. Giggling inanely at everything and nothing. Noisy and vociferous among themselves or with inferiors; shy, awkward and blushing with ladies or in refined society—distressing my feeble efforts to talk to them by their silly explosions of laughter when one of them was addressed. They formed the bane of my life for some time.
“Will you let me paint you?” said Fräulein Sartorius, whose big eyes had been surveying me in a manner that made me nervous.
“Paint me?”
“Your likeness, I mean. You are very pretty, and we never see that color of hair here.”
“Are you a painter?”
“No, I’m only a Studentin yet; but I paint from models. Well, will you sit to me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. If I have time, perhaps.”
“What will you do to make you not have time?”
I did not feel disposed to gratify her curiosity, and said I did not know yet what I should do.