romance, but she merely looked at him over her nose-glasses and
said, "And is that so, Herr Julius!" One could see that she was a
match for them.

The conversation went racing from one thing to another. The
brothers began to argue hotly about a new girl who was visiting
in town; whether she was pretty, how pretty she was, whether she
was naive. To Claude this was like talk in a play. He had never
heard a living person discussed and analysed thus before. He had
never heard a family talk so much, or with anything like so much
zest. Here there was none of the poisonous reticence he had
always associated with family gatherings, nor the awkwardness of
people sitting with their hands in their lap, facing each other,
each one guarding his secret or his suspicion, while he hunted
for a safe subject to talk about. Their fertility of phrase, too,
astonished him; how could people find so much to say about one
girl? To be sure, a good deal of it sounded far-fetched to him,
but he sadly admitted that in such matters he was no judge. When
they went back to the living room Julius began to pick out airs
on his guitar, and the bearded brother sat down to read. Otto,
the youngest, seeing a group of students passing the house, ran
out on to the lawn and called them in,--two boys, and a girl
with red cheeks and a fur stole. Claude had made for a corner,
and was perfectly content to be an on-looker, but Mrs. Erlich
soon came and seated herself beside him. When the doors into the
parlour were opened, she noticed his eyes straying to an
engraving of Napoleon which hung over the piano, and made him go
and look at it. She told him it was a rare engraving, and she
showed him a portrait of her great-grandfather, who was an
officer in Napoleon's army. To explain how this came about was a