But even that was a mere nothing, and might have happened to any one.
But when I came home again that night, you would have thought that the whole happening had been printed legibly on my face.

The Little Playmate would not let me come within a hundred miles of her.

And it was "Keep your distance, sirrah!" Not perhaps said in words, but expressed as clearly by the warlike angle of an arm, the contumelious hitch of a shoulder, or the scornful sweep of an adverse skirt.
And all about nothing! Mighty Hector! I never saw such things as women.
And yet in her good moments she would call me "Great Brother," and tell me that she thought only of my future welfare, desiring that I should not compromise myself in any entanglement with such as were not worthy of me.
Oh, a most wise and prudent counsellor was the Playmate in these days.
And I used ever to say: "Helene, when I am truly in love I will e'en bring her here to you, and, by my faith, if you approve not--why, there is an end of the matter.

Back she goes to her mother like a parcel of returned goods--aye, if she were the Kaiser's daughter herself!" Whereat she pouted and was not ill-pleased.
"Ah, my man," she would reply, "after a girl hath said you nay a time or two, it will bring you down from these high notions, and be much for your soul's final good!" But yet, when I could keep her in good-humor, it was exceedingly sweet to bide quietly in the house with the Little Playmate--far better than to gad about with Texels and meandering fools, which indeed I did oftentimes just because it made my little lass so full of moods and tenses--like one of Friar Laurence's irregular verbs in his cursed Humanities.

For there is nothing so variously delightful as a woman when she is half in love and half out of it--more interesting (say some) though less delightful than when she is all and whole in love.
Nevertheless, there are exceptions, and one woman at least I know more various, and more delicious also, since love's ocean hath gone over her head, than ever she was when, like a timid bather, she shivered on the brink or made little fearful plunges, as it were knee-deep, and so ran out again.
But I am not come to that in the story yet.
Well, on the afternoon of the next day, who should come to the house in the Red Tower but our Helene's gossip, for this week at least her bosom friend, Katrin Texel.