t Billy felt as if there were but one love affair in the
world and that one her own: all the rest was simply bungling.
Discontentedly she returned to her bed; she could not join the others
down there yet. Where could Marion be!

When Marion came, she had to tell her story. How did he look as he rode
away? How did he take leave of father? Of course Marion had not seen
the things that really counted, but she brought a message. "But
absolutely word for word, please," Billy admonished her.

"Yes, certainly, this is what he said," reported Marion: "Come tomorrow
at noon to the linden that stands outside the fence at the end of the
park. There Billy shall have news. Tell Billy that she alone has the
decision."

"Oh, dear," wailed Billy, "this horrible decision again! What does
he mean? What will be at the linden?"

And the two girls sat together and whispered about this mystery; they
could not stop talking about it. In the room it grew dusky, and the
mystery became steadily more threatening. Billy could endure it no
longer and sent Marion away:

"Go, you keep saying the same thing. Send old Lohmann to me. She's the
only one of you I can stand. Have her tell her old stories."

"Lohmann came with her little yellow face under the black cap, and the
hands contracted with gout. She was an old nurse-maid, who was now
spending her old age in a small chamber in the basement, by sitting at
the window behind her geraniums, and eating the bread of charity. The
old woman cowered down at Billy's bed and began in a lamenting voice,

"Yes, our little countess is having a hard time, everybody has a hard
time, there's nothing else for it;" but Billy interrupted her
irritably: "But Lohmann, is that what I sent for you for. Tell your old
stories, can't you, I can pity myself."

And Lohmann recounted the stories she had told so often, how as a tiny
girl she had taken milk and cheese to town with her mother, very early
in the gray morning light. In winter it was very cold and they would
warm themselves in a little tavern; other market women would be sitting
there too, wrapped in heavy shawls like big balls of gray, and little
Lohmann was given _Warmbier_, that was hot beer with milk and sugar.
Billy saw all that, it was what she wanted to see, the little tavern
full of those balls of gray; it smelled of damp wool and an overheated
stove, and outside the windows was the blue cold twilight of the winter
morning. That was sad and peaceful,