ted appetite, as though shop were so interesting that
even on Sundays they couldn't let it be, and poring together over maps.
No trace of stolidity. But where is this stolidity one has heard
about? Compared to the Germans I've seen, it is we who are stolid;
stolid, and slow, and bored. The last thing these people are is bored.
On the contrary, the officers had that same excitement about them, that
same strung-upness, that the men boarders at Frau Berg's have.

Potsdam is charming, and swarms with palaces and parks. If it hadn't
been woods I was after I would have explored it with great interest.
Do you remember when you read Carlyle's Frederick to me that winter you
were trying to persuade me to learn to sew? And, bribing me to sew,
you read aloud? I didn't learn to sew, but I did learn a great deal
about Potsdam and Hohenzollerns, and some Sunday when it isn't quite so
fine I shall go down and visit Sans Souci, and creep back into the past
again. But today I didn't want walls and roofs, I wanted just to walk
and walk. It was very crowded in the train coming back, full of people
who had been out for the day, and weary little children were crying,
and we all sat heaped up anyhow. I know I clutched two babies on my
lap, and that they showed every sign of having no self-control. They
were very sweet, though, and I wouldn't have minded it a bit if I had
had lots of skirts; but when you only have two!

Wanda was very kind, and brought me some secret coffee and bread and
butter to my room when I told her I had walked at least ten miles and
was too tired to go into supper. She cried out "_Herr Je_!"--which I'm
afraid is short for Lord Jesus, and is an exclamation dear to her--and
seized the coffee pot at once and started heating it up. I remembered
afterwards that German miles are three times the size of English ones,
so no wonder she said _Herr Je_. But just think: I haven't seen a
single boarder for a whole day. I do feel so much refreshed.

You know I told you in my last letter I was going to lunch with the
Koseritzes on Monday, and so I did, and the chief thing that happened
there, was that I was shy. Imagine it. So shy that I blushed and
dropped things. For years I haven't thought of what I looked like when
I've been with other people, because for years other people have been
so absorbingly interesting that I forgot I was there too; but at the
Koseritzes I suddenly found myself remembering, greatly to my