Helene Romisch, the daughter of the house, had a mania for knowing every one's age, and put the question to me in the first ten minutes of our acquaintance. She had evidently remembered every answer she had ever received to her questions, for she told me the age of every one who passed by on the road, and when there was no one passing she gave me a list of the family connections of those who had gone, or those who were likely to go, with full details as to birthdays.
I think it was Eliza, the other girl, who could speak no English and had to use Lena as interpreter, who first broached the tender subject of matrimony.
Was I married?
I said, "No."
Then, after a few minutes' conference—
Had I a girl?
"No—I hadn't," I told them.
Then came a long and heated discussion, and Lena was hard put to it, with her scanty store of English words, and my recently acquired German, to frame such a delicate question. I thought I knew what it was going to be—but I did not raise a hand to help.
Why hadn't I a girl? Did I not like girls? or what?
I said I did like girls; that was not the reason. Then all three talked at once, and I knew a further explanation was going to be demanded if Lena's English could frame it. This is the form in which the question came: