ot seem to care, his senses
were so pleasantly numbed.

On his way up to his room, in the dim hall, he caught sight of a
young woman hanging up her wrap. Mussed strands of straw-colored
hair shone down her shoulders and sent a sudden thrill of gladness
through his veins. He had never seen but one Wagner opera and that
was "The Twilight of the Gods," with its aureate Rhine maidens
bathing in that delicious revelry of divine music. The arrival at
last of the daughter of the house, as he assumed this was, brought
back a flash of all that golden loveliness.

In his sleep that first night, vast trenchers of food and tankards
of drink disported in happy confusion with goddesses blond and
magical.

CHAPTER V

FAMILY LIFE

The matter of much eating and drinking had first to be, if possible,
disposed of. It was exacting and the most important affair. Kirtley
did not want to be discourteous or appear unappreciative. He had
come to Germany to do as the superior Germans do. His digestive
tract was on the narrow-gage American plan. Theirs was broad-gage,
with their surpassing organisms.

At the Buchers Gard had manfully to face six meals a day. Must he be
swamped in order to put the desirable adipose tissue on his bones?
By all the laws of American dieting and Prohibition the German race
should have been destroyed by indigestion and drunkenness centuries
ago. But here they were more flourishing than ever--the generally
acknowledged nation of masters!

And his bed--the German bed. He could not remember whether Mark
Twain ever described it, but he should have. Gard's haven of rest
appeared to lie on solid foundations. It was constructed with German
stability. There were as many blankets in summer as in winter.

Worst of all, two immense feather pillows lay across its middle. The
only place for them seemed to be on his sorely tried stomach or on
the floor. In a month an attack of insomnia resulted. For hours at
night he lay awake, listening to the frequent rain on the roof or
the wind whining Teutonically in the leaves of his linden.

In his initial troubles and anxieties he went to a German doctor.
This spectacled wise man prescribed more beer. German physicians
seemed to be in league with the brewers. Gard was of the kind who
would suffer rather than complain. So he worried along.

He did not fall in with the urgent, conscientious assumption of
the Buchers that he would at once want to begin driving away at
"le