“O you naughty, puzzling creature! Why didn’t you tell the poor fellow yes on the spot, as I did to my darling Ulrich?”
“Why?” said Walburga, looking pensively at her; then, after hesitating a moment: “Well, Moida, it was because I have thus far adroitly, but perhaps foolishly, concealed something from him; you know what I mean. And, like a coward, when the crisis arrived, when he asked for my hand, I still put off the revelation for a brief space.”
“Well, Mr. Seinsheim will be a fool, a big fool, if he doesn’t marry you; that’s all I can say,” replied Moida, tenderly twining her arms about her friend’s neck. “And, what’s more, if I didn’t think we were all of us going to live near one another at Loewenstein, I’d hate him for trying to take you away from me.”
“Well, you and I have certainly been very happy together, have we not, Moida?”
“Oh! very, very, very; and you should have kept your pretty nightingale, so as to have brought him with us to Tyrol.”
“Perhaps I ought,” answered Walburga, her countenance now clearing up; for hope, sweet hope, was just at this moment flashing its rays into her bosom and inspiring her to believe that Conrad would surely accept her, accept her exactly as she was, and, like a brave, good husband, bear upon his own shoulders as much of her cross as he was able.
A few minutes later the two friends were passing through the park on their way to Foering. This place is simply a beer-garden—one of the many within an hour’s walk of Munich. Here on the warmest summer day the air is cool, for the spot is high and commanding, and, moreover, well shaded by elm-trees. But better than breeze or shade is the beer—beer such as one can taste only in Southern Bavaria. In the middle of the garden is a platform elevated a few inches above the ground, where those who are fond of dancing may trip it merrily to the music of a fiddle, harp, and flute, dropping now and again a copper into the tin plate which one of the minstrels passes through the crowd.
When Moida and Walburga arrived Foering was well-nigh deserted, and they had no difficulty in being helped at once to whatever they wanted, for the good-natured waiter-girl had only them to wait on. But ere long other people began to come. First appeared a husband and wife, the former carrying the baby—the best of all babies, of course—and so bound up in swaddling-clothes that the little thing could do naught except wink. Then followed a soldier hand-in-hand with a buxom lass, with nature’s own rouge glowing on her cheeks; and hand-in-hand these two sat down, and hand-in-hand they quenched their thirst out of the same mug, the beverage tasting all the more like nectar for this sweet communion of lips.
Presently a pursy gentleman waddled into the garden, his respiration so laborious that you could hear him from afar, and dropped heavily down upon the same bench where Moida and Walburga were seated. To judge by his appearance you would have declared there was not a spark of sentiment in his whole composition; he looked to be a sheer mass of beer-drenched humanity. Yet this was wide, wide of the truth. Herr Wurst was organist of the cathedral, was passionately fond of poetry, and knew by heart every song of the Minnesingers. In short, he was a Bavarian every inch of him, and never was so much soul hidden in a sausage.
And thus on, on the people came, all jovial, all orderly, and to look at them you might have fancied they had not a care or trouble in the world. Then by and by the music commenced. ’Twas a waltz from Strauss, and the corpulent organist, who knew our young friends—for they both sang in his choir—danced thrice round the platform with each; and the baby in swaddling-clothes lay upon the bench like a little Stoic while its daddy and mammy whirled round too; and the buxom lass and the soldier likewise danced—danced so hard, threw such life into their motions, that when at length they paused to give their hearts a rest you might have thought they had been out in a shower of rain.