d an
official with you who keeps count, and when you have had your sport,
the trout belong to the municipality just as they did before you caught
them."

"I don't see why that isn't a good notion: the last thing I should
want to do would be to eat a fish that I had caught, and that I was
personally acquainted with. Well, I'm never going away from Carlsbad. I
don't wonder people get their doctors to tell them to come back."

Burnamy told them a number of facts he said Stoller had got together
about the place, and had given him to put in shape. It was run in the
interest of people who had got out of order, so that they would keep
coming to get themselves in order again; you could hardly buy an
unwholesome meal in the town; all the cooking was 'kurgemass'. He won
such favor with his facts that he could not stop in time: he said to
March, "But if you ever should have a fancy for a fish of your personal
acquaintance, there's a restaurant up the Tepl, where they let you pick
out your trout in the water; then they catch him and broil him for you,
and you know what you are eating."

"Is it a municipal restaurant?"

"Semi-municipal," said Burnamy, laughing.

"We'll take Mrs. March," said her husband, and in her gravity Burnamy
felt the limitations of a woman's sense of humor, which always define
themselves for men so unexpectedly.

He did what he could to get back into her good graces by telling her
what he knew about distinctions and dignities that he now saw among the
breakfasters. The crowd had now grown denser till the tables were set
together in such labyrinths that any one who left the central aisle was
lost in them. The serving-girls ran more swiftly to and fro, responding
with a more nervous shrillness to the calls of "Fraulein! Fraulein!"
that followed them. The proprietor, in his bare head, stood like one
paralyzed by his prosperity, which sent up all round him the clash of
knives and crockery, and the confusion of tongues. It was more than an
hour before Burnamy caught Lili's eye, and three times she promised to
come and be paid before she came. Then she said, "It is so nice, when
you stay a little," and when he told her of the poor Fraulein who
had broken the dishes in her fall near them, she almost wept with
tenderness; she almost winked with wickedness when he asked if the
American princess was still in her place.

"Do go and see who it can be!" Mrs. March entreated. "We'll wait here,"
and he obeyed. "I am