“Seien Sie willkommen, mein Fraulein,” she continued, with a sort of stern cordiality, when I was over the threshold, holding out both her hands in massive greeting; and as both mine were full she caught hold of what she could, and it was the bag of biscuits, and it burst.

“Herr Gott!” cried Frau Berg again, as they rattled away over the wooden floor of the passage, “Herr Gott, die schonen Kakes!” And she started after them; so I put down my things on a chair and started after them too, and would you believe it the biscuits came out of the corners positively cleaner than when they went in.  The floor cleaned the biscuits instead of, as would have happened in London, the biscuits cleaning the floor, so you can be quite happy about its being a clean place.

It is a good thing I learned German in my youth, for even if it is so rusty at present that I can only say things like Nicht wahr, I can understand everything, and I’m sure I’ll get along very nicely for at least a week on the few words that somehow have stuck in my memory.  I’ve discovered they are: 

  Nicht wahr,
  Wundervoll,
  Naturlich,
  Herrlich,
  Ich gratuliere,
    and
  Doch.

And the only one with the faintest approach to contentiousness, or acidity, or any of the qualities that don’t endear the stranger to the indigenous, is doch.

My bedroom looks very clean, and is roomy and comfortable, and I shall be able to work very happily in it, I’m sure.  I can’t tell you how much excited I am at getting here and going to study under the great Kloster!  You darling one, you beloved mother, stinting yourself, scraping your own life bare, so as to give me this chance. Won’t I work.  And work. And work.  And in a year—­no, we won’t call it a year, we’ll say in a few months—­I shall come back to you for good, carrying my sheaves with me.  Oh, I hope there will be sheaves,—­big ones, beautiful ones, to lay at your blessed feet!  Now I’ll run down and post this.  I saw a letter-box a few yards down the street.  And then I’ll have a bath and go to bed for a few hours, I think.  It is still only nine o’clock in the morning, so I have hours and hours of today before me, and can practise this afternoon and write to you again this evening.  So good-bye for a few hours, my precious mother.

  Your happy Chris.

  May 28th.  Evening.

It’s very funny here, but quite comfortable.  You needn’t give a thought to my comforts, mother darling.  There’s a lot to eat, and if I’m not in clover I’m certainly in feathers,—­you should see the immense sackful of them in a dark red sateen bag on my bed!  As you have been in Germany trying to get poor Dad well in all those Kurorten, you’ll understand how queer my bedroom looks, like a very solemn and gloomy drawingroom into which it has suddenly occurred to somebody to put a bed.  It is a tall room: