Recently,
dear mama, when the good Flemming damsels plied me with all
sorts of questions imaginable, it seemed as though I were
undergoing an examination poorly prepared, and I think I must
have answered very stupidly. I was out of sorts, too, for often
what looks like sympathy is mere inquisitiveness, and theirs
impressed me as the more meddlesome, since I have a long while
yet to wait for the happy event. Some time in the summer, early
in July, I think. You must come then, or better still, so soon
as I am at all able to get about, I'll take a vacation and set
out for Hohen-Cremmen to see you. Oh, how happy it makes me to
think of it and of the Havelland air! Here it is almost always
cold and raw. There I shall drive out upon the marsh every day
and see red and yellow flowers everywhere, and I can even now
see the baby stretching out its hands for them, for I know it
must feel really at home there. But I write this for you alone.
Innstetten must not know about it and I should excuse myself
even to you for wanting to come to Hohen-Cremmen with the baby,
and for announcing my visit so early, instead of inviting you
urgently and cordially to Kessin, which, you may know, has
fifteen hundred summer guests every year, and ships with all
kinds of flags, and even a hotel among the dunes. But if I show
so little hospitality it is not because I am inhospitable. I am
not so degenerate as that. It is simply because our residence,
with all its handsome and unusual features, is in reality not a
suitable house at all; it is only a lodging for two people, and
hardly that, for we haven't even a dining room, which, as you
can well imagine, is embarrassing when people come to visit us.
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