Yet Dorothea said the next day at the dinner table that she was going to
accept the invitation. It would be much easier just to go and have it
over with, she remarked, than to stay away and explain her absence. She
said this in a way that would lead you to believe that it had cost her
much effort to come to her decision.
"Certainly, go!" said Daniel. "I have already advised you to do it
myself."
She had had a dark blue velvet dress made, and she wanted to wear it for
the first time on this occasion.
Toward five o'clock Daniel went to his bedroom. He saw Dorothea standing
before the mirror in her new dress. It was a tall, narrow mirror on a
console. Dorothea had received it from her father as a wedding present.
"What is the matter with her?" thought Daniel, on noticing her complete
lack of excitement. She was as if lost in the reflection of herself in
the mirror. There was something rigid, drawn, transported about her
eyes. She did not see that Daniel was standing in the room. When she
raised her arm and turned her head, it was to enjoy these gestures in
the mirror.
"Dorothea!" said Daniel gently.
She started, looked at him thoughtfully, and smiled a heady smile.
Daniel was anxious, apprehensive.
V
"I am related to Daniel, and we must address each other by the familiar
_Du_," said Philippina to Dorothea. Daniel's wife agreed.
Every morning when Dorothea came into the kitchen Philippina would say:
"Well, what did you dream?"
"I dreamt I was at the station and it was wartime, and some gipsies came
along and carried me off," said Dorothea on one occasion.
"Station means an unexpected visit; war means discord with various
personalities; and gipsies mean that you are going to have to do with
some flippant people." All this Philippina rattled off in the High
German of her secret code.
Philippina was also an adept in geomancy. Dorothea would often sit by
her side, and ask her whether this fellow or that fellow were in love
with her, whether this girl loved that fellow and the other girl
another, and so on through the whole table of local infatuations.
Philippina would make a number of dots on a sheet of paper, fill in the
numbers, hold the list up to the light, and divulge the answer of the
oracle.
In a very short while the two were one heart, one soul. Dorothea could
always count on Philippina's laughter of approval when she fell into one
of her moods of excessive friskiness. And if Agnes failed to show the
proper amount of interest, Philippina would poke her in the ribs and
exclaim: "You little rascallion, has the cat got your tongue?"
Agnes would then sneak off in mournful silence to her school books, and
sit for hours over the simplest kind of a problem in the whole
arithmetic. Dorothea would occasionally bring her a piece of taffy. She
would wrap it up, put it in her pocket, and give it the next day to a
schoolmate from whose note book she had copied her sums in subtraction.
Herr Seelenfromm stopped Philippina on the street, and said to her:
"Well, how are you getting along? How is the young wife making out?"
"Oi, oi, we're living on the fat of the land, I say," Philippina
replied, stretching her mouth from ear to ear. "Chicken every day, cake
too, wine always on hand, and one guest merely opens the door on
another."
"Nothafft must have made a pile of money," remarked Herr Seelenfromm in
amazement.
"Yes, he must. Nobody works at our house. The wife's pocket-book at
least is always crammed."
The sky was blue, the sun was bright, spring had come.