"I think we can arrange it," he said, smiling, "although my time is almost wholly occupied. Tell me what you have already studied."
Whereupon we launched into details, and he appointed next Wednesday as the time for my first lesson. He does not speak a word of English, and I found him exceedingly difficult to understand, but he assures me he is accustomed to foreigners.
"If we don't make ourselves intelligible," he ended, laughing, "we can try a few French phrases, or even a bit of Latin, as a pupil of mine did the other day." Instead of my taking leave of him there, he went out to the very door with me, which he opened, bowing smilingly, and as it closed I felt wonderfully less like a stranger in a strange land.
At the corner I took a tram back to town. They are all alike, very short, and painted the Bavarian blue. Think of a city so patriotic that the street cars assume the national hue! The conductor politely touched his hat to me as I entered. I thought he must have mistaken me for some one else till I saw him salute each passenger in the same courteous manner. Where Brienner-strasse meets Odeons-Platz I alighted. This is just by the Feldernhalle. If you have seen pictures of the Loggia at Florence you can tell how it looks, for it is a copy of the Italian building. Here I was to meet Fräulein L——. She is a friend of the Baroness and had offered to help me in hiring a piano. That elocution course of ours proved very valuable to me at this stage, for had it not been for the telling and effective gestures with which I supplemented my German I might have had in my study a far less acceptable instrument than the excellent Blüthner which now stands here and for which I pay the absurdly small sum of ten marks (two dollars and a half) a month.
"By the bye," said I, as we were walking through Theatiner-strasse, "did I make a great many mistakes in my note to you?"
I meant this to sound naïvely humble, but in reality I had spent a half-hour on the composition of those ten lines and I was rather proud of the result.
"Oh, no," she replied, smiling, "you merely asked me to meet you on top of the Feldernhalle. I was wondering," she added, mischievously, glancing as we passed at the building's imposing height, "just how I could get up there."
For several blocks I was silent, meditating on the sad results of "pride, rank pride and haughtiness of soul," although I fully appreciated her effort at a joke. Such pleasantries are almost unheard of in German girls, and whenever they do say anything facetious they look very much frightened, as though at a loss whether to apologize at once or explain how it came to happen. I must send you one of the comic papers. They considerately print the point of a joke in italics. One has at least the satisfaction of knowing when to laugh, a virtue not to be despised when one considers the subtleties of modern wit, so called.
"This is where I buy my music," said Fräulein L——, stopping before a small store, "and if it pleases you I will introduce you here."
Accordingly we went in, and after meeting the proprietor I was initiated into the mysteries of that very important factor in a student's life, an abonnement. One pays a small sum for the privilege of taking out music from a circulating library for a definite length of time. The arrangement impressed me at once as advantageous, and I inquired as to the kinds of music the catalogue contained. "Why, songs, operas, overtures, anything you care for," said the proprietor, in a patronizing tone.