All ought to be so interested in this mother and her Erick, that they would want to know everything possible about them, and now no one asked a question and they hardly listened to her communication.

That was too much; Sally had to relieve her tension.
She suddenly broke forth to Edi, who was entirely lost in his book: "Although you read a thousand books one after the other, and act as if one did not tell anything, and you think that one must have no friendship with any human being on this earth but only for the thousand-thousand-year-old Egyptians, yet you might be glad to have a friend like Erick." Edi must have just read something that made him solemn, for he looked quite restrainedly up from his book and said quite seriously: "You see, Sally, you do not at all know what friendship is, for you believe that one can have a new friend every week.

But one ought to have only one friend for the whole life, and one must drag his enemy three times around the walls of Troy." "Then he will have to make a nice journey if he comes from Upper Wood," remarked Sally quickly.
The mother meanwhile had left the room, and Aunt rose from her work.
"You will get quite barbaric from pure historical research," she said, turning to Edi, "but now it is high time to go to bed, quick! But where is Ritz ?" Ritz had withdrawn behind the stove a full hour ago in the hope of there escaping his fate for some time.

But sleep had overcome him in the dark corner.
"Now we have the trouble," the aunt cried, when the sleeper had been discovered, and only with the greatest difficulty she woke him.
While Auntie was pushing and shaking the sleepy Ritz, Edi had tried several times to get near her, but she had always escaped him.

Now a quiet moment came.