The tall fair young man smiled, but answered stubbornly: “It’s a fact, Hannah, you are more careless about English than about German. Not in grammar only, but in pronunciation. How is a poor foreigner to guess that ’sumpn’ for instance means ‘something’?”
“If it didn’t mean anything, I wouldn’t say it,” retorted Hannah saucily. “Is there any other criticism you have to make upon my use of my native tongue, Mr. Germany?”
“You drop your final ‘g’ occasionally, and always your final ‘r’,” went on the accuser.
Hannah laughed. “You can’t hear an ‘r’ unless 110 it’s rolled over the tongue like macaroni, Karl Von Arndtheim! Just wait till you hear the western girls talk, and you’ll be satisfied. Look! Look! It’s as much as an inch nearer. Give me the glasses again. I do believe that’s Frieda. No, not the red one, but the blue one with the veil floating. Can you see?”
Karl pushed his way through the crowd, drawing Hannah safely along into a little open space at one side. Stationing himself against a pile of boxes, he helped her climb to the top and support herself by clinging to his shoulder.
“There, child, you can sit and watch, and she’ll see you better than if you were mixed up in the crowd. Put up that sunshade and wave it. She will think you are a great blue bird ready to fly out and meet her.”
“I wish I were a gull. I’d fly right to her dear shoulder and peck her cheek. But are you sure I’m not too heavy, Karl? This thing is wobbly and I lean on you awfully for such a fat lady as I am.”
“I can endure it! I say, Hannah, now she is so nearly here, I’m beginning to get excited myself. Die niedliche Kleine! It doesn’t seem two years ago that you youngsters used to send cakes and things down to my window from yours. You were a pair of ministering angels.”
“Wasn’t it fun? Poor Karl! I did pity you so, 111 cooped up in the house that way. And you played the violin like an angel yourself, like a grieving one.”
“Well, we’ve all given up the angel hypothesis by this time, though it was useful in getting us interested in each other. There! This time I see her, not in red nor in blue, but in brown. See! She is jumping up and down and waving to us.”