“Have you bumped yourself?” asks Kropp.
“You could hear that well enough for yourself,” I growl, “my head———”
A door opens in the rear of the car. The sister comes with a light and looks at me.
“He has fallen out of bed———”
She feels my pulse and smoothes my forehead. “You haven’t any fever, though.”
“No,” I agree.
“Have you been dreaming then?” she asks.
“Perhaps———” I evade. The interrogation starts again. She looks at me with her clear eyes, and the more wonderful and sweet she is the less am I able to tell her what I want.
I am lifted up into bed again. That will be all right. As soon as she goes I must try to climb down again. If she were an old woman, it might be easier to say what a man wants, but she is so very young, at the most twenty-five, it can’t be done, I cannot possibly tell her.
Then Albert comes to my rescue, he is not bashful, it makes no difference to him who is upset. He calls to the sister. She turns round. “Sister, he wants———” but no more does Albert know how to express it modestly and decently. Out there we say it in a single word, but here, to such a lady——— All at once he remembers his school days and finishes
250
