No, it was certainly not the Professor! My old friend could not have grown that magnificent beard since last we met: moreover, he would have recognised me, for I was certain that I had not changed much in the time.
As it was, he simply looked at me vaguely, and took off his hat in response to Lady Muriel’s words “Let me introduce Mein Herr to you”; while in the words, spoken in a strong German accent, “proud to make your acquaintance, Sir!” I could detect no trace of an idea that we had ever met before.
Lady Muriel led us to the well-known shady nook, where preparations for afternoon tea had already been made, and, while she went in to look for the Earl, we seated ourselves in two easy-chairs, and ‘Mein Herr’ took up Lady Muriel’s work, and examined it through his large spectacles (one of the adjuncts that made him so provokingly like the Professor). “Hemming pocket-handkerchiefs?” he said, musingly. “So that is what the English miladies occupy themselves with, is it?”
“It is the one accomplishment,” I said, “in which Man has never yet rivaled Woman!”
Here Lady Muriel returned with her father; and, after he had exchanged some friendly words with ‘Mein Herr,’ and we had all been supplied with the needful ‘creature-comforts,’ the newcomer returned to the suggestive subject of Pocket-handkerchiefs.
“You have heard of Fortunatus’s Purse, Miladi? Ah, so! Would you be surprised to hear that, with three of these leetle handkerchiefs, you shall make the Purse of Fortunatus, quite soon, quite easily?”
“Shall I indeed?” Lady Muriel eagerly replied, as she took a heap of them into her lap, and threaded her needle. “Please tell me how, Mein Herr! I’ll make one before I touch another drop of tea!”
“You shall first,” said Mein Herr, possessing himself of two of the handkerchiefs, spreading one upon the other, and holding them up by two corners, “you shall first join together these upper corners, the right to the right, the left to the left; and the opening between them shall be the mouth of the Purse.”
A very few stitches sufficed to carry out this direction. “Now, if I sew the other three edges together,” she suggested, “the bag is complete?”
“Not so, Miladi: the lower edges shall first be joined—ah, not so!” (as she was beginning to sew them together). “Turn one of them over, and join the right lower corner of the one to the left lower corner of the other, and sew the lower edges together in what you would call the wrong way.”