Without this Mrs. March, who
kept her husband up to his early passion for the poet with a feeling that
she was defending him from age in it, said that their silver wedding
journey would not be complete; and he began himself to think that it
would be interesting.
They took a sleeping-car for Frankfort and they woke early as people do
in sleeping-cars everywhere. March dressed and went out for a cup of the
same coffee of which sleeping-car buffets have the awful secret in Europe
as well as America, and for a glimpse of the twilight landscape. One gray
little town, towered and steepled and red-roofed within its mediaeval
walls, looked as if it would have been warmer in something more. There
was a heavy dew, if not a light frost, over all, and in places a pale fog
began to lift from the low hills. Then the sun rose without dispersing
the cold, which was afterwards so severe in their room at the Russischer
Hof in Frankfort that in spite of the steam-radiators they sat shivering
in all their wraps till breakfast-time.
There was no steam on in the radiators, of course; when they implored the
portier for at least a lamp to warm their hands by he turned on all the
electric lights without raising the temperature in the slightest degree.
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