Frau Kellermann rounded on him. “Do you mean to say, my dear Herr Langen, you did not stop the child!”
“No,” said Herr Langen; “I’ve tried stopping him before now.”
“Da, that child has such energy; never is his brain at peace. If he is not doing one thing, he is doing another!”
“Perhaps he has started on the dining-room clock now,” suggested Herr Langen, abominably hopeful.
The Advanced Lady suggested that we should go without him. “I never take my little daughter for walks,” she said. “I have accustomed her to sitting quietly in my bedroom from the time I go out until I return!”
“There he is—there he is,” piped Elsa, and Karl was observed slithering down a chestnut-tree, very much the worse for twigs.
“I’ve been listening to what you said about me, mumma,” he confessed while Frau Kellermann brushed him down. “It was not true about the watch. I was only looking at it, and the little girl never stays in the bedroom. She told me herself she always goes down to the kitchen, and—”
“Da, that’s enough!” said Frau Kellermann.
We marched en masse along the station road. It was a very warm afternoon, and continuous parties of “cure guests”, who were giving their digestions a quiet airing in pension gardens, called after us, asked if we were going for a walk, and cried “Herr Gott—happy journey” with immense ill-concealed relish when we mentioned Schlingen.
“But that is eight kilometres,” shouted one old man with a white beard, who leaned against a fence, fanning himself with a yellow handkerchief.