"Will you allow me to accompany you?" asked Linden, unable to take his eyes off the graceful form. And that was Gertrude Baumhagen!
She assented. "I am not afraid for myself, but I am sure you would never find your way out of this maze of streets into which my good Johanna has enticed you. This part about here is quite the oldest part of the town. You cannot see it this evening, but by daylight a walk through this quarter would well repay you. I like this neighborhood, though only people of the lower class live here," she continued, walking with a firm step on the slippery pavement.
"Do you see down there on the corner that house with the great stone steps in front and the bench under the tree? My grandmother was born in that house, and the tree is a Spanish lilac. Grandfather fell in love with her as she sat one evening under the tree rocking her youngest brother. She has often told me about it. The lilac was in blossom and she was just eighteen. Isn't it a perfect little poem?"
Then she laughed softly. "But I am telling you all this and I don't know in the least what you think of such things."
They were just opposite the small house with the lilac tree. He stopped and looked up. She perceived it and said: "I can never go by without having happy thoughts and pleasant memories. Never was there a dearer grandmother, she was so simple and so good." And as he was silent she added, as if in explanation, "She was a granddaughter of the foreman in grandpapa's factory."
Still nothing occurred to him to say and he could not utter a merely conventional phrase.
She too remained silent for a while. "May I ask you," she then began, "not to give too many presents to the baby--they are simple people who might be easily spoiled."
He assented. "A man like me is so unpractical," he said, by way of excuse. "I did not exactly know what was expected of me after I had offered myself as godfather in such an intrusive manner."
"That was no intrusion, that was a feeling of humanity, Mr. Linden."
"I was afraid I might have seemed to you, too impulsive--too--" he stopped.