Four Days | Page 8

the mood for laughter. She must be happy
and light-hearted. Time enough later on to be serious.
"Sure," she replied gravely, mocking eyes on Leonard. "Weren't you?"
Leonard shook his head. "Just with actresses and things, when I was a
kid. Never, really."
"I suppose," said Marjorie, pensively, "I ought to care if you've been
bad or not, but I don't."
"But Marjie, darling,"--Leonard brought her back and went straight to
his point,--"were you ever really in love with that German chap you
spoke of when I gave you the helmet?"
"He was my first love," said Marjorie, with wicked demureness. "I was
fifteen and he was eighteen."
"You were just a flapper," said Leonard; "you couldn't be in love."
"A woman is never too young to adore some man," said Marjorie,
sagely. "I was a miserable homesick wretch, spending the winter in a
German boarding-school."

"A German school! What for?"
Marjorie, her small face drawn with fatigue, but her eyes vivid with
excitement, regarded him pertly.
"In order to learn German--and culture."
Leonard gave a grunt.
"Yes, Len, dear, it was dreadful. You never could have stood it, you're
so particular," Marjorie said, settling her head against Leonard's arm.
"The girls only bathed once a year!"
"Dirty beasts!" muttered Leonard. "But what's that got to do with the
point?"
"I'm preparing you for that by degrees. Len, dear, it was dreadful. No
one spoke a word of English, and I couldn't speak a word of German,
and it was such a long winter, and all the flowers and grass were dead
in the garden, and at night a huge walnut tree used to rattle against my
window and scare me; and they don't open their windows at night, and I
nearly died of suffocation! They think in Germany that the night air is
poisonous."
"They don't use it instead of gas. How about the man? Hurry up!"
He looked at his watch, but Marjorie chose to ignore him.
"We've got eleven hours," she said, with tragic contentment; "I'm
coming to the man. The girls used to sit about indoors and
embroider--oh, everlastingly! Hideous things. I was, oh, so restless!
You know how you are at that age."
"I was playing football," said Leonard; "so ought the man to have been,
instead of casting sheep's eyes at you."
"He had nice eyes," said Marjorie, pensively, "and lived next door,
and," she added, as Leonard puffed stolidly at his pipe, "he was terribly
good-looking."

"He was?" said Leonard, raising his eyebrows.
"So tall for his age, and his head always looked as if he were racing
against the wind. He was always rumpling his hair as if in a sort of
frenzy of energy, and he was awkward and graceful at the same time,
like a big puppy who is going to be awfully strong. He was like a big,
very young dog. So energetic, it was almost as if he were hungry."
"He's hungry along with the rest of 'em now, I hope," murmured
Leonard.
"His name was Carl von Ehnheim. He lived in a very grand house next
door," continued Marjorie, "and he used to come over and make formal
calls on the pension Müller. He never looked at me, and whenever I
spoke he looked down or out of the window, and that's how I knew he
liked me."
"Most abominable case of puppy love," said Leonard.
"Oh, it was so puppy!" cried Marjorie; "but of course it made the winter
pass less drearily."
"How so--'of course'?"
"Because he would always happen to come down his steps when I came
down mine. Or when I was in the garden walking on the frozen walk
with huge German overshoes on, he would draw aside the curtain of his
house and stand there pretending not to see me until I bowed, and then
he would smile and pretend he had just noticed me. And then, when
Christmas came, all the girls went home, and Frau Müller and I were
asked over to his house to spend the day. Did you ever spend a
Christmas in Germany, Len, dear?"
"No, but I hope to some day."
"It's so nice, it's like Christmas in a book. He used to come into the
garden after that, and we'd play together. And we read German
lesson-books in the summer-house. And then, sometimes, for no reason

at all, we would run around the summer-house until we were all out of
breath, and had messed up all the paths. One day he had to go away. It
was time for him to go into the army to be made an officer, and I didn't
see him for so long, and I forgot all about him, nearly. I would have if I
hadn't been so lonely."
"Humph!" said Leonard; and