The Bornsteds say Koseritz is a very beautiful place, on the very edge of the Haff.  They talk with deep respectfulness of the Herr Graf, and the Frau Grafin, and the junge Komtesse.  It’s wonderful how respectful Germans are towards those definitely above them.  And so uncritical.  Kloster says that it is drill does it.  You never get over the awe, he says, for the sergeant, for the lieutenant, for whoever, as you rise a step, is one step higher.  I told the Bornsteds I had met the Koseritzes in Berlin, and they looked at me with a new interest, and Frau Bornsted, who has been very prettily taking me in hand and endeavouring to root out the opinions she takes for granted that I hold, being an Englanderin, came down for a while more nearly to my level, and after having by questioning learned that I had lunched with the Koseritzes, and having endeavoured to extract, also by questioning, what we had had to eat, which I couldn’t remember except the whipped cream I spilt on the floor, she remarked, slowly nodding her head, “It must have been very agreeable for you to be with the grafliche Familie.”

“And for them to be with me,” I said, moved to forwardness by being full of forest air, which goes to my head.

I suppose this was what they call disrespectful without being funny, for Frau Bornsted looked at me in silence, and Herr Bornsted, who doesn’t understand English, asked in German, seeing his wife solemn, “What does she say?” And when she told him he said, “Ach,” and showed his disapproval by absorbing himself in the Deutsche Tageszeitzing.

It’s wonderful how easy it is to be disrespectful in Germany.  You’ve only got to be the least bit cheerful and let some of it out, and you’ve done it.

“Why are the English always so like that?” Frau Bornsted asked presently, after having marked her regret at my behaviour by not saying anything for five minutes.

“Like what?”

“So—­so without reverence.  And yet you are a religious people.  You send out missionaries.”

“Yes, and support bishops,” I said.  “You haven’t got any bishops.”

“You are the first nation in the world as regards missionaries,” she said, gazing at me thoughtfully and taking no notice of the bishops.  “My father”—­her father is a pastor—­“has a great admiration for your missionaries.  How is it you have so many missionaries and at the same time so little reverence ?”

“Perhaps that is why,” I said; and started off explaining, while she looked at me with beautiful uncomprehending eyes, that the reaction from the missionaries and from the kind of spirit that prompts their raising and export might conceivably produce a desire to be irreverent and laugh, and that life more and more seemed to me like a pendulum, and that it needs must swing both ways.

Frau Bornsted sat twisting her wedding ring on her finger till I was quiet again.  She does this whenever I emit anything that can be called an idea.  It reminds her that she is married, and that I, as she says, am nur ein junges Madchen, and therefore not to be taken seriously.