The next evening, when he was sauntering down the row of glittering shops beside the Tepl, with Mrs. March, they overtook the general and his daughter at a place where the girl was admiring some stork-scissors in the window; she said she wished she were still little, so that she could get them.  They walked home with the Triscoes, and then he hurried Mrs. March back to the shop.  The man had already put up his shutters, and was just closing his door, but Burnamy pushed in, and asked to look at the stork-scissors they had seen in the window.  The gas was out, and the shopman lighted a very dim candle, to show them.

“I knew you wanted to get them for her, after what she said, Mrs. March,” he laughed, nervously, “and you must let me lend you the money.”

“Why, of course!” she answered, joyfully humoring his feint.  “Shall I put my card in for the man to send home to her with them?”

“Well—­no.  No.  Not your card—­exactly.  Or, yes!  Yes, you must, I suppose.”

They made the hushing street gay with their laughter; the next evening Miss Triscoe came upon the Marches and Burnamy where they sat after supper listening to the concert at Pupp’s, and thanked Mrs. March for the scissors.  Then she and Burnamy had their laugh again, and Miss Triscoe joined them, to her father’s frowning mystification.  He stared round for a table; they were all taken, and he could not refuse the interest Burnamy made with the waiters to bring them one and crowd it in.  He had to ask him to sup with them, and Burnamy sat down and heard the concert through beside Miss Triscoe.

“What is so tremendously amusing in a pair of stork-scissors?” March demanded, when his wife and he were alone.

“Why, I was wanting to tell you, dearest,” she began, in a tone which he felt to be wheedling, and she told the story of the scissors.

“Look here, my dear!  Didn’t you promise to let this love-affair alone?”

“That was on the ship.  And besides, what would you have done, I should like to know?  Would you have refused to let him buy them for her?” She added, carelessly, “He wants us to go to the Kurhaus ball with him.”

“Oh, does he!”

“Yes.  He says he knows that she can get her father to let her go if we will chaperon them.  And I promised that you would.”

“That I would?”

“It will do just as well if you go.  And it will be very amusing; you can see something of Carlsbad society.”

“But I’m not going!” he declared.  “It would interfere with my cure.  The sitting up late would be bad enough, but I should get very hungry, and I should eat potato salad and sausages, and drink beer, and do all sorts of unwholesome things.”

“Nonsense!  The refreshments will be ‘kurgemass’, of course.”

“You can go yourself,” he said.