ody ever tell us that there were no flies in Germany?
Why did no traveller ever put it in his book? When your stewardess
said so on the steamer, I remember that you regarded it as a bluff."
He turned to Burnamy, who was listening with the deference of a
contributor: "Isn't Lili rather long? I mean for such a very prompt
person. Oh, no!"

But Burnamy got to his feet, and shouted "Fraulein!" to Lili; with her
hireling at her heels she was flying down a distant aisle between the
tables. She called back, with a face laughing over her shoulder, "In a
minute!" and vanished in the crowd.

"Does that mean anything in particular? There's really no hurry."

"Oh, I think she'll come now," said Burnamy. March protested that he
had only been amused at Lili's delay; but his wife scolded him for his
impatience; she begged Burnamy's pardon, and repeated civilities passed
between them. She asked if he did not think some of the young ladies
were pretty beyond the European average; a very few had style; the
mothers were mostly fat, and not stylish; it was well not to regard the
fathers too closely; several old gentlemen were clearing their throats
behind their newspapers, with noises that made her quail. There was no
one so effective as the Austrian officers, who put themselves a good
deal on show, bowing from their hips to favored groups; with the
sun glinting from their eyeglasses, and their hands pressing their
sword-hilts, they moved between the tables with the gait of tight-laced
women.

"They all wear corsets," Burnamy explained.

"How much you know already!" said Mrs. March. "I can see that Europe
won't be lost on you in anything. Oh, who's that?" A lady whose costume
expressed saris at every point glided up the middle aisle of the grove
with a graceful tilt. Burnamy was silent. "She must be an American. Do
you know who she is?"

"Yes." He hesitated, a little to name a woman whose tragedy had once
filled the newspapers.

Mrs. March gazed after her with the fascination which such tragedies
inspire. "What grace! Is she beautiful?"

"Very." Burnamy had not obtruded his knowledge, but somehow Mrs. March
did not like his knowing who she was, and how beautiful. She asked March
to look, but he refused.

"Those things are too squalid," he said, and she liked him for saying
it; she hoped it would not be lost upon Burnamy.

One of the waitresses tripped on the steps near them and flung the
burden off her tray on the stone floor