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"Heaps of time," I politely assured her, "don't hurry. But why not have a chair and be comfortable?" Frau Knapf was not to be deceived. "I go in a minute. But first it is something I like to ask you. You know maybe Frau Nirlanger?" I shook my head. "But sure you must know. From Vienna she is, with such a voice like a bird." "And the beads, and the gray gown, and the fringe, and the cigarettes?"
Frau Nirlanger shook her head with a little hopeless sigh. "You do not know Vienna; you do not know the iron strength of caste, and custom and stiff-necked pride. I am dead in Vienna. And the dead should rest in peace." It was late in the afternoon when Von Gerhard and I turned the corner which led to the building that held the Post. I had saved that for the last.
"I should say that you would be more in the Nirlanger style, in your large, immovable, Germansure way. Not that you would stoop to wrangle about money or gowns, but that you would control those things. Your wife will be a placid, blond, rather plump German Fraulein, of excellent family and no imagination. Men of your type always select negative wives.
"Such a nice lady she is, and stylish, like anything! And her name is Frau Orme." "Oh, really, Frau Knapf " I murmured in blushing confusion. "Sure, it is so," insisted Frau Knapf, coming a step nearer, and sinking her, voice one hiss lower. "You shouldn't say I said it, but Frau Nirlanger likes she should look young for her husband. He is much younger as she is aber much. Anyhow ten years.
The Irish-crocheted saleswoman and I clasped hands and fell back in attitudes of admiration. Frau Nirlanger turned this way and that before the long mirror and chattered like a pleased child. Her adjectives grew into words of six syllables. She cooed over the soft-shining stuff in little broken exclamations in French and German.
We three women stood looking down at him as he lay there in the quaint old blue-painted bed that had once held the plump little Knapfs. "You think anyway he had enough supper? mused the anxious-browed Frau Knapf. "To school he will have to go, yes?" murmured Frau Nirlanger, regretfully.
Today comes Frau Nirlanger by me and she says: 'Frau Knapf, I wish to buy clothes, aber echt Amerikanische. Myself, I do not know what is modish, and I cannot go alone to buy." "That's a grand idea," said I, recalling the gray basque and the cannon-ball beads. "Ja, sure it is," agreed Frau Knapf.
They made a serene and beautiful picture there against the green canopy of the leaves. We spoke of Frau Nirlanger, and of Blackie, and of the strange snarl of events which had at last been unwound to knit a close friendship between us.
So-o-o-o, Konrad Nirlanger he gets a chance to come by Amerika where there is a big engineering plant here in Milwaukee, and she begs her husband he should come, because this boy she loves very much Oh, she loves her young husband too, but different, yes?" "Oh, yes," I agreed, remembering the gay little trilling laugh, and the face that was so young when animated, and so old and worn in repose.
"If this were Austria, instead of Amerika, you would not forget. In Austria people of your class do not speak in this manner to those of my caste." "Unsinn!" laughed Konrad Nirlanger. "This is Amerika." "Yes," said Anna Nirlanger, "this is Amerika. And in Amerika all things are different.
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