"What have you been reading?" I began again after a pause, walking the while up and down the shop. "A book from the lending library? Such a torn shabby copy is not fit for your small white hands. Allow me--I have a quantity of charming books at home--romances too--"
"Pardon me," she quietly rejoined. "I have no time to read romances. This is a French Grammar."
"You are studying by yourself then?"
"I already speak it a little, I wish to understand it more thoroughly."
She relapsed into silence, and began to arrange the plates and spoons.
"Miss Lottka," said I after an interval, during which I had regained courage from a contemplation of the gruff old Blücher in the smaller room. "Are you happy in the position that you occupy at present?"
She looked at me out of her large weary eyes with the amazement of a child in a fairy-tale when suddenly addressed by a bird.
"How come you to put such a question?" she enquired.
"Pray do not attribute it to heartless curiosity," I went on, in my excitement upsetting a small pyramid of biscuits. "Believe that I feel a genuinely warm interest in you-- If you need a friend--if anything has happened to you--you understand me-- Life is so sad, Miss Lottka--and just in our youth--"
I was floundering deeper and deeper, and the drops stood on my brow. I would have given a good deal if that old Blücher had not encouraged me to make this speech.