Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther

'Gott, diese Mädchen,' exclaimed a waiting lady to me as I arrived, hot and ruffled after my long tramp in the sun. I dropped into a chair beside her; and hot and ruffled as I was, she, who had been sitting there hours, was still more so. In her agitation she had cried out to the first human being at hand, the Fräulein at the desk having something too distinctly inhuman about her—strange as a result of her long and intimate intercourse with human beings—to be lightly applied to for sympathy. Then looking at me again she cried, 'Why, it is the good Rose-Marie!' And I saw she was an old friend of my step-mother's, Frau Meyer, the wife of one of the doctors at the Lunatic Asylum, who used to come in often while you were with us, and whenever she came in you went out.

'Not married yet?' she asked as we shook hands, smiling as though the joke were good.

I smiled with an equal conviction of its goodness, and said I was not.

'Not even engaged?'

'Not even engaged,' said I, smiling more broadly, as if infinitely tickled.

'You must be quick,' said she.

I admitted the necessity by a nod.

'You are twenty-six—I know your age because poor Emilie'—Emilie was my step-mother—'was married ten years, and when she married you were sixteen. Twenty-six is a great age for a girl. When I was your age I had already had four children. What do you think of that?'

I didn't know what to think of it, so smiled vaguely, and turning to the waiting machine at the desk began my list. 'Hard-working, clean, honest—'

'Yes, yes, if we could but find such treasures,' interrupted Frau Meyer with a reverberating sigh. 'Here am I engaged to give the first coffee-party of the season—'

'What, in summer?'

'It is not summer in September. If the weather chooses to pretend it is I cannot help it. It is autumn, and I will no longer endure the want of social gatherings. Invariably I find the time between the last Coffee of spring and the first of autumn almost unendurable. What do you do, Rose-Marie, up there on that horrible mountain of yours, to pass the time?'

Pass the time? I who am so much afraid of Time's passing me that I try to catch at him as he goes, pull him back, make him creep slowly while I squeeze the full preciousness out of every minute? I gazed at her abstractedly, haunted by the recollection of flying days, days gone so quickly, vanished before I well knew how happy I was being. 'I really couldn't tell you,' I said.

'Hard-working, clean, honest,—' read out the Fräulein, reminding me that I was busy.

'Moral,' I dictated, 'able to wash—'

'You will never find one,' interrupted Frau Meyer again. 'At least, never one who is both moral and able to wash. Two good things don't go together with these girls, I find. The trouble I am in for want of one! They are as scarce and as expensive as roses in December. Since April I have had three, and all had to leave by the merest accident—nothing at all to do with the place or me; but the ones in there seem to know there have been three in the time, and make the most extravagant demands. I have been here the whole morning, and am in despair.'

She stopped to fan herself with her handkerchief.

'Able to wash,' I resumed, 'iron, cook, mend—have you any one suitable, Fräulein?'

'Many,' was the laconic answer.

'I'm afraid we cannot give more than a hundred and sixty marks,' said I.

'Pooh,' said Frau Meyer; and there was a pause in the scratching of the pen.

'But there are no children,' I continued.

The pen went on more glibly. Frau Meyer fanned herself harder.

'And only two Herrschaften.'

The pen skimmed over the paper.

'We live up—we live up on the Galgenberg.'

The pen stopped dead.

'You will never find one who will go up there,' cried Frau Meyer triumphantly. 'I need not fear your taking a good one away from me. They will not leave the town.'

The Fräulein rang a bell and called out a name. 'It is another one for you, Frau Doctor,' she said; and a large young lady came in from the other room. 'The general servant Fräulein Ottilie Krummacher—Frau Doctor Meyer,' introduced the Fräulein. 'I think you may suit each other.'

'It is time you showed me some one who will,' groaned Frau Meyer. 'Six have I already interviewed, and the demands of all are enough to make my mother, who was Frau Gutsbesitzer Grosskopf of the Grosskopfs of Grosskopfsecke, born Knoblauch, and a lady of the most exact knowledge in household matters, turn in her grave.'

'Town?' asked the large girl quickly, hardly allowing Frau Meyer to get to a full stop, and obviously callous as to the Grosskopfs of Grosskopfsecke.

'Yes, yes—here, overlooking the market-place and the interesting statue of the electoral founder of the University. No way to go, therefore, to market. Enlivening scenes constantly visible from the windows—'

'Which floor?'

'Second. Shallow steps, and a nice balustrade. Really hardly higher than the first floor, or even than an ordinary ground floor, the rooms being very low.'

'Washing?'

'Done out of the house. Except the smallest, fewest trifles such as—such as—ahem. The ironing, dear Fräulein, I will do mostly myself. There are the shirts, you know—husbands are particular—'

'How many?'

'How many?' echoed Frau Meyer. 'How many what?'

'Husbands.'

'Aber, Fräulein,' expostulated the secretary.

'She said husbands,' said the large girl. 'Shirts, then—how many? It's all the same.'

'All the same?' cried Frau Meyer, who adored her husband.

'In the work it makes.'

'But, dear Fräulein, the shirts are not washed at home.'

'But ironed.'

'I iron them.'

'And I heat the irons and keep up the fire to heat them with.'

'Yes, yes,' cried Frau Meyer, affecting the extreme pleasure of one who has just received an eager assurance, 'so you do.'

The large girl stared. 'Cooking?' she inquired, after a slightly stony pause.

'Most of that I will do myself, also. The Herr is very particular. I shall only need a little—quite a little assistance. And think of all the new and excellent dishes you will learn to make.'

The girl waved this last inducement aside as unworthy of consideration. 'Number of persons in the household?'

Frau Meyer coughed before she could answer. 'Oh,' said she, 'oh, well—there is my husband, and naturally myself, and then there are—there are—are you fond of children?' she ended hastily.

The girl fixed her with a suspicious eye. 'It depends how many there are,' she said cautiously.

Frau Meyer got up and leaned over the Fräulein at the desk, and whispered into her impassive ear.

The Fräulein shook her head. 'I am afraid it is no use,' she said.

Frau Meyer whispered again. The Fräulein looked up, and fastening her eyes on a point somewhere below the large girl's chin said, 'The wages are good.'

'What are they?' asked the girl.

'Considering the treatment you will receive—' the girl's eyes again became suspicious—'they are excellent.'

'What are they?'

'Everything found, and a hundred and eighty marks a year.'

The girl turned and walked toward the door.

'Stop! Stop!' cried Frau Meyer desperately. 'I cannot see you throw away a good place with so little preliminary reflection. Have you considered that there would be no trudging to market, and consequently you will only require half the boots and stockings and skirts those poor girls have to buy who live up in the villas that look so grand and pretend to give such high wages?'

The girl paused.

'And no steep stairs to climb, laden with heavy baskets? And hardly any washing—hardly any washing, I tell you!' she almost shrieked in her anxiety. 'And no cooking to speak of? And every Sunday—mind, every Sunday evening free? And I never scold, and my husband never scolds, and with a hundred and eighty marks a year there is nothing a clever girl cannot buy. Why, it is an ideal, a delightful place—one at which I would jump if I were a girl, and this lady'—indicating me—'would jump, too, would you not, Rose-Marie?'