II
Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum
habitare fratres in unum!
Siegfried presented himself at the home of Mrs. Maecenas late the following afternoon. He was just as gawkily formed as the night before, and another yellow-covered book was in his hand, but his breath this time smelled strongly of coffee-beans. In spite of the coffee-beans, however, Siegfried had had no more whiskey; with peculiar astuteness in these matters, he had realized that it would probably be a false step to exhale the same shocking odour of the previous night, but on the other hand, to exhale the standard destroyer of this odour might give the precisely proper variation. Siegfried selected his breath with as much care as less imaginative souls give to their neckties. The door was opened by the widow herself.
"Mrs. Maecenas, I believe?"
"Oh, Siegfried, won't you come in?" She had always insisted on calling the students by their first names.
He stepped into a dark reception hall, and then followed her to the left into her library, Mrs. Maecenas having dispensed with the small-town parlour. "I am very glad you came to see me, although . . ." and here she laughed with her widow roguishness, "although I'm not so sure that I ought to be."
Siegfried was startled. He had not hoped to be taken so freely. But he skimmed the cream of the occasion, and cast away the yoke of his youth in the quality of his equals-to-equals answer, "Throw all caution, etc., I implore you, Mrs. Maecenas, and be less churchly and more Christian. I have come to you as a last hope; deliver me from this American captivity." He began looking over her books without further formality. Mrs. Maecenas sat down tentatively on the piano stool, facing away from the piano, and her two arms stretched back on the key-board.
"Your remarks might lead me to conclude that you are not an American yourself, my dear boy, but nevertheless I'll risk my life that you, like me, were raised under the tutelage of the chopped-down cherry tree." At this Siegfried turned suddenly, like an ill-tempered dog.
