“Yes, she’s wrapped up in him; she’d give her life for him; but she is so light.  I didn’t suppose she was so light; but it’s borne in upon me more and more.”

They were constantly seeing Rose and his mother, in the sort of abeyance the Triscoes had fallen into.  One afternoon the Addings came to Mrs. March’s room to look from her windows at a parade of bicyclers’ clubs from the neighboring towns.  The spectacle prospered through its first half-hour, with the charm which German sentiment and ingenuity, are able to lend even a bicycle parade.  The wheelmen and wheelwomen filed by on machines wreathed with flowers and ribbons, and decked with streaming banners.  Here and there one sat under a moving arch of blossoms, or in a bower of leaves and petals, and they were all gay with their club costumes and insignia.  In the height of the display a sudden mountain shower gathered and broke upon them.  They braved it till it became a drenching down-pour; then they leaped from their machines and fled to any shelter they could find, under trees and in doorways.  The men used their greater agility to get the best places, and kept them; the women made no appeal for them by word or look, but took the rain in the open as if they expected nothing else.

Rose watched the scene with a silent intensity which March interpreted.  “There’s your chance, Rose.  Why don’t you go down and rebuke those fellows?”

Rose blushed and shrank away without answer, and Mrs. March promptly attacked her husband in his behalf.  “Why don’t you go and rebuke them yourself?”

“Well, for one thing, there isn’t any conversation in my phrase-book Between an indignant American Herr and a Party of German Wheelmen who have taken Shelter from the Rain and are keeping the Wheelwomen out in the Wet.”  Mrs. Adding shrieked her delight, and he was flattered into going on.  “For another thing, I think it’s very well for you ladies to realize from an object-lesson of this sort what spoiled children of our civilization you are.  It ought to make you grateful for your privileges.”

“There is something in that,” Mrs. Adding joyfully consented.

“Oh, there is no civilization but ours,” said Mrs. March, in a burst of vindictive patriotism.  “I am more and more convinced of it the longer I stay in Europe.”

“Perhaps that’s why we like to stay so long in Europe; it strengthens us in the conviction that America is the only civilized country in the world,” said March.

The shower passed as quickly as it had gathered, and the band which it had silenced for a moment burst forth again in the music which fills the Carlsbad day from dawn till dusk.  Just now, it began to play a pot pourri of American airs; at the end some unseen Americans under the trees below clapped and cheered.

“That was opportune of the band,” said March.  “It must have been a telepathic impulse from our patriotism in the director.  But a pot pourri of American airs is like that tablet dedicating the American Park up here on the Schlossberg, which is signed by six Jews and one Irishman.  The only thing in this medley that’s the least characteristic or original is Dixie; and I’m glad the South has brought us back into the Union.”