the big tree looking so happy?'

We went in silence to the red-brick hotel; and threading our way among
the crowded tables set out under a huge beech tree a few yards from the
water to the only empty one, we found ourselves sitting next to the
Harvey-Brownes.

'Dear Frau Nieberlein, how delightful to have you here again!' cried the
bishop's wife in tones of utmost cordiality, leaning across the little
space between the tables to press Charlotte's hand. 'Brosy has been
scouring the country on his bicycle trying to discover your retreat, and
was quite disconsolate at not finding you.'

Scouring the country in search of Charlotte! Heavens. And I who had
dropped straight on top of her in the waters of Thiessow without any
effort at all! Thus does Fortune withhold blessings from those who
clamour, and piles them unasked on the shrinking heads of the meek.

Brosy Harvey-Browne meanwhile, like a polite young man acquainted with
German customs, had got out of his chair and was waiting for Charlotte
to present him to me. 'Oh yes, my young philosopher,' I thought, not
without a faint regret, 'you are now to find out that your promising and
intellectual Fraeulein isn't anything of the sort.'

'Pray present me,' said Brosy.

Charlotte did.

'Pray present me,' I said in my turn, bowing in the direction of the
bishop's wife.

Charlotte did.

At this ceremony the bishop's wife's face took on the look of one who
thinks there is really no need to make fresh acquaintances in breathless
hurries. It also wore the look of one who, while admitting a Nieberlein
within the range of her cordiality on account of the prestige of that
Nieberlein's famous husband, does not see why the Nieberlein's obscure
female relatives should be admitted too. So I was not admitted; and I
sat outside and studied the menu.

'How very strange,' observed Brosy in his beautifully correct German as
he dropped into a vacant chair at our table, 'that you should be related
to the Nieberleins.'

'One is always related to somebody,' I replied; and marvelled at my own
intelligence.

'And how odd that we should meet again here.'

'One is always meeting again on an island if it is small enough.'

This is a sample of my conversation with Brosy, weighty on my part with
solid truths, while our supper was being prepared and while Charlotte
answered his mother's questions as to where she had been, where she had
met me, how we were related, and who my husband was.