I
just want her to see the man that made our buggy. I don't know what's
keeping her, this morning," he added, apologetically. "Look at that
fellow, will you, tryin' to get away from those women!" A young officer
was doing his best to take leave of two ladies, who seemed to be mother
and daughter; they detained him by their united arts, and clung to him
with caressing words and looks. He was red in the face with his polite
struggles when he broke from them at last. "How they do hang on to a man,
over here!" the Iowa man continued. "And the Americans are as bad as any.
Why, there's one ratty little Englishman up at our place, and our girls
just swarm after him; their mothers are worse. Well, it's so, Jenny," he
said to the lady who had joined them and whom March turned round to see
when he spoke to her. "If I wanted a foreigner I should go in for a man.
And these officers! Put their mustaches up at night in curl-papers, they
tell me. Introduce you to Mrs. Otterson, Mr. March. Well, had your first
glass, yet, Jenny? I'm just going for my second tumbler."
He took his wife back to the spring, and began to tell her about Stoller;
she made no sign of caring for him; and March felt inculpated. She
relented a little toward him as they drank together; when he said he must
be going to breakfast with his wife, she asked where he breakfasted, and
said, "Why, we go to the Posthof, too.
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