less enjoyed as
an ethical problem.

The general looked so little at the papers that before March went off for
his morning walk he saw him come out of the reading-room and take his way
down the Alte Wiese. He went directly back to his daughter, and reported
Burnamy's behavior with entire exactness. He dwelt upon his making the
best of a bad business in refusing to help Stoller out of it,
dishonorably and mendaciously; but he did not conceal that it was a bad
business.

"Now, you know all about it," he said at the end, "and I leave the whole
thing to you. If you prefer, you can see Mrs. March. I don't know but I'd
rather you'd satisfy yourself--"

"I will not see Mrs. March. Do you think I would go back of you in that
way? I am satisfied now."

XXXIX.

Instead of Burnamy, Mrs. Adding and her son now breakfasted with the
Marches at the Posthof, and the boy was with March throughout the day a
good deal. He rectified his impressions of life in Carlsbad by March's
greater wisdom and experience, and did his best to anticipate his
opinions and conform to his conclusions. This was not easy, for sometimes
he could not conceal from himself, that March's opinions were whimsical,
and his conclusions fantastic; and he could not always conceal from March
that he was matching them with Kenby's on some points, and suffering from
their divergence. He came to join the sage in his early visit to the
springs, and they walked up and down talking; and they went off together
on long strolls in which Rose was proud to bear him company. He was
patient of the absences from which he was often answered, and he learned
to distinguish between the earnest and the irony of which March's replies
seemed to be mixed. He examined him upon many features of German
civilization, but chiefly upon the treatment of women in it; and upon
this his philosopher was less satisfactory than he could have wished him
to be. He tried to excuse his trifling as an escape from the painful
stress of questions which he found so afflicting himself; but in the
matter of the woman-and-dog teams, this was not easy. March owned that
the notion of their being yokemates was shocking; but he urged that it
was a stage of evolution, and a distinct advance upon the time when women
dragged the carts without the help of the dogs; and that the time might
not be far distant when the dogs would drag the carts without the help of
the women.

Rose surmised a joke, and he tried to