decide for your whole life, and other people’s too, whether it shall be yes or no?
It was very still. The clock ticked away on the wall, and the only other sound was Mamsell Jungmann’s occasional cough. Her room was next to Tony’s, divided only by curtains from it. She still had a light. The born-and-bred Prussian was sitting under the hanging lamp at her extension-table, darning stockings for little Erica. The child’s deep, peaceful breathing could be heard in the room, for Sesemi’s pupils were having summer holidays and Erica was at home again.
Frau Grünlich sighed and sat up a little, propping her head on her hand. “Ida,” she called softly, “are you still sitting there mending?”
“Yes, yes, Tony, my child,” Ida answered. “Sleep now; you will be geiting up early in the morning, and you won't get enough rest.”
“All right, Ida. You will wake me at six o'clock?”
“Half past is early enough, child. The carriage is ordered for eight. Go on sleeping, so you will look fresh and pretty.”
“Oh, I haven’t slept at all yet.”
“Now, Tony, that is a bad child. Do you want to look all knocked up for the picnic? Drink seven swallows of water, and then lie down and count a thousand.”
“Oh, Ida, do come here a minute. I can’t sleep, I tell you, and my head aches for thinking. Feel—I think I have some fever, and there is something the matter with my tummy again. Or is it because I am anæmic? The veins in my temples are all swollen and they beat so that it hurts; but still, there may be too little blood in my head.”
A chair was pushed back, and Ida Jungmann’s lean, vigorous figure, in her unfashionable brown gown, appeared between the portières.
“Now, now, Tony—fever? Let me feel, my child—I’ll make you a compress.”
She went with her long firm masculine tread to the chest for a handkerchief, dipped it into the water-basin, and, going
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