As if made out of moonbeams there stood before us on a knoll of the heath an uncommonly dainty and graceful female form and a quite charming female face bowed to us in the moonlight and looked phenomenally pretty. Whether Circuit Judge Löhnefinke from Gross-Fauhlenberg had a charming face I cannot say, but he possessed a modest, in a way quite jovial face and his enthusiasm of the last few hours had embellished it. So I was all the more surprised by the expression with which he looked at his lovely daughter. Instead of becoming happier and even more cheerful, his features suddenly went slack and immediately transformed themselves into a cross between sullen and peevish.
"Is that finally you, papa? Well, you're late I must say!" the elfish phantom cried while coming towards us.
"Yes, it's finally me," grunted my colleague, "and here…"
He did not complete his sentence for the young lady interrupted him:
"We've been waiting for you a long time, papa, and mother is very angry with you!"
"Hm!" grunted my colleague and "hm!" was also what I said in the depths of my soul.
"Come, Helene, let's go home," said Löhnefinke soothingly, but the moonlit elf retorted even more brusquely:
"Thank you, papa, but I'll go with mother. She's coming now and will tell you herself how she's waited for you. Mother, here's father finally!"
He was indeed here, the paterfamilias Löhnefinke, and at this moment in time he quoted no more German verse and no more foreign either. Mother stepped forward through the moonlight, quite quickly and energetically in fact. I would not have been averse to taking my leave before she reached us, but my colleague held my arm fast with the grip of a Prussian dragoon and whispered:
"I want to introduce you. Where are you going? Colleague, allow me to present to you my wife!"