“Oh, no.  My wife is.  She’ll be along directly; I come down here and drink the waters to encourage her; doctor said to.  That gets me in for the diet, too.  I’ve e’t more cooked fruit since I been here than I ever did in my life before.  Prunes?  My Lord, I’m full o’ prunes!  Well, it does me good to see an American, to know him.  I couldn’t ‘a’ told you, it you hadn’t have spoken.”

“Well,” said March, “I shouldn’t have been so sure of you, either, by your looks.”

“Yes, we can’t always tell ourselves from these Dutch.  But they know us, and they don’t want us, except just for one thing, and that’s our money.  I tell you, the Americans are the chumps over here.  Soon’s they got all our money, or think they have, they say, ’Here, you Americans, this is my country; you get off;’ and we got to get.  Ever been over before?”

“A great while ago; so long that I can hardly believe it.”

“It’s my first time.  My name’s Otterson:  I’m from out in Iowa.”

March gave him his name, and added that he was from New York.

“Yes.  I thought you was Eastern.  But that wasn’t an Eastern man you was just with?”

“No; he’s from Chicago.  He’s a Mr. Stoller.”

“Not the buggy man?”

“I believe he makes buggies.”

“Well, you do meet everybody here.”  The Iowan was silent for a moment, as if, hushed by the weighty thought.  “I wish my wife could have seen him.  I just want her to see the man that made our buggy.  I don’t know what’s keeping her, this morning,” he added, apologetically.  “Look at that fellow, will you, tryin’ to get away from those women!” A young officer was doing his best to take leave of two ladies, who seemed to be mother and daughter; they detained him by their united arts, and clung to him with caressing words and looks.  He was red in the face with his polite struggles when he broke from them at last.  “How they do hang on to a man, over here!” the Iowa man continued.  “And the Americans are as bad as any.  Why, there’s one ratty little Englishman up at our place, and our girls just swarm after him; their mothers are worse.  Well, it’s so, Jenny,” he said to the lady who had joined them and whom March turned round to see when he spoke to her.  “If I wanted a foreigner I should go in for a man.  And these officers!  Put their mustaches up at night in curl-papers, they tell me.  Introduce you to Mrs. Otterson, Mr. March.  Well, had your first glass, yet, Jenny?  I’m just going for my second tumbler.”

He took his wife back to the spring, and began to tell her about Stoller; she made no sign of caring for him; and March felt inculpated.  She relented a little toward him as they drank together; when he said he must be going to breakfast with his wife, she asked where he breakfasted, and said, “Why, we go to the Posthof, too.”  He answered that then they should be sure some time to meet there; he did not venture further; he reflected that Mrs. March had her reluctances too; she distrusted people who had amused or interested him before she met them.