“Does he write?” she queried in surprise. The uneducated goose! The superficial hussy! Did she not know that I had already published two volumes of lyrical poetry? And she asks if I write!
“I should think so,” replied my friend Otto, with an infamous roar of laughter. “Every little while he hatches a new poem a yard or two long, and reads it to his friends.”
Emma shook with laughter.
“So far he has spared me,” she observed.
“Never fear, my love, never fear,” I muttered into my false beard; “you shan’t have any more opportunity to be bored by me!”
In my mind I was composing the crushing farewell-note I intended to write to the faithless one on the morrow.
After a time which seemed endless to me we reached the garden restaurant called “Charlottenhof.”
“Hold on, driver!” bellowed my friend Otto, who, taking me to be deaf, considered it necessary to address me in his loudest tones. Then he turned to Emma.
“Come, sweetheart,” he said, “we will have a glass of beer.” He helped her get down. “Wait till we come back,” he said to me. At the gate stood a waiter: “Fetch a glass of beer for the driver,” he added, and before I had time to enter protest he had stepped into the garden, arm-in-arm with his lady-love.
Fully an hour and a half did my friend Otto see best to keep me waiting at the door, while he was amusing himself in the garden with his adored.