She said, "Poor Mr.March!" and laughed inattentively; when he went on to philosophize the commonness of the sparse company always observable at the Sans-Souci as a just effect of its Laodicean situation between Pupp's and the Posthof, the girl sighed absently, and his wife frowned at him.
The flower-woman at the gate of her garden had now only autumnal blooms for sale in the vases which flanked the entrance; the windrows of the rowen, left steeping in the dews overnight, exhaled a faint fragrance; a poor remnant of the midsummer multitudes trailed itself along to the various cafes of the valley, its pink paper bags of bread rustling like sere foliage as it moved.
At the Posthof the 'schone' Lili alone was as gay, as in the prime of July.

She played archly about the guests she welcomed to a table in a sunny spot in the gallery.

"You are tired of Carlsbad ?" she said caressingly to Miss Triscoe, as she put her breakfast before her.
"Not of the Posthof," said the girl, listlessly.
"Posthof, and very little Lili ?" She showed, with one forefinger on another, how very little she was.
Miss Triscoe laughed, not cheerily, and Lili said to Mrs.March, with abrupt seriousness, "Augusta was finding a handkerchief under the table, and she was washing it and ironing it before she did bring it.

I have scolded her, and I have made her give it to me." She took from under her apron a man's handkerchief, which she offered to Mrs.March.It bore, as she saw Miss Triscoe saw, the initials L.J.B.
But, "Whose can it be ?" they asked each other.
"Why, Burnamy's," said March; and Lili's eyes danced.

"Give it here!" His wife caught it farther away.