Their waiter had put them at a table in a division of the gallery beyond that which they entered, where some groups of officers were noisily supping.  There was no one in their room but a man whose face was indistinguishable against the light, and two young girls who glanced at them with looks at once quelled and defiant, and then after a stare at the officers in the gallery beyond, whispered together with suppressed giggling.  The man fed on without noticing them, except now and then to utter a growl that silenced the whispering and giggling for a moment.  The Marches, from no positive evidence of any sense, decided that they were Americans.

“I don’t know that I feel responsible for them as their fellow-countryman; I should, once,” he said.

“It isn’t that.  It’s the worry of trying to make out why they are just what they are,” his wife returned.

The girls drew the man’s attention to them and he looked at them for the first time; then after a sort of hesitation he went on with his supper.  They had only begun theirs when he rose with the two girls, whom Mrs. March now saw to be of the same size and dressed alike, and came heavily toward them.

“I thought you was in Carlsbad,” he said bluntly to March, with a nod at Mrs. March.  He added, with a twist of his head toward the two girls, “My daughters,” and then left them to her, while he talked on with her husband.  “Come to see this foolery, I suppose.  I’m on my way to the woods for my after-cure; but I thought I might as well stop and give the girls a chance; they got a week’s vacation, anyway.”  Stoller glanced at them with a sort of troubled tenderness in his strong dull face.

“Oh, yes.  I understood they were at school here,” said March, and he heard one of them saying, in a sweet, high pipe to his wife: 

“Ain’t it just splendid?  I ha’n’t seen anything equal to it since the Worrld’s Fairr.”  She spoke with a strong contortion of the Western r, and her sister hastened to put in: 

“I don’t think it’s to be compared with the Worrld’s Fairr.  But these German girls, here, just think it’s great.  It just does me good to laff at ’em, about it.  I like to tell ’em about the electric fountain and the Courrt of Iionorr when they get to talkin’ about the illuminations they’re goun’ to have.  You goun’ out to the parade?  You better engage your carriage right away if you arre.  The carrs’ll be a perfect jam.  Father’s engaged ourrs; he had to pay sixty marrks forr it.”

They chattered on without shyness and on as easy terms with a woman of three times their years as if she had been a girl of their own age; they willingly took the whole talk to themselves, and had left her quite outside of it before Stoller turned to her.

“I been telling Mr. March here that you better both come to the parade with us.  I guess my twospanner will hold five; or if it won’t, we’ll make it.  I don’t believe there’s a carriage left in Wurzburg; and if you go in the cars, you’ll have to walk three or four miles before you get to the parade-ground.  You think it over,” he said to March.  “Nobody else is going to have the places, anyway, and you can say yes at the last minute just as well as now.”