"Look sharp and get it made, then."
She says: "It is made."
He turns and regards the girl sternly. Is she taking advantage of
his being a lonely stranger, far from home and friends, to mock him?
He goes over to what she calls the bed, and snatching off the top-
most sack from the pile and holding it up, says:
"Perhaps you'll tell me what this is, then?"
"That," says the girl, "that's the bed!"
He is somewhat nonplussed at the unexpected reply.
"Oh!" he says. "Oh! the bed, is it? I thought it was a pincushion!
Well, if it is the bed, then what is it doing out here, on the top
of everything else? You think that because I'm only a man, I don't
understand a bed!"
"That's the proper place for it," responds the chambermaid.
"What! on top?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, then where are the clothes?"
"Underneath, sir."
"Look here, my good girl," he says; "you don't understand me, or I
don't understand you, one or the other. When I go to sleep, I lie
on a bed and pull the clothes over me. I don't want to lie on the
clothes, and cover myself with the bed. This isn't a comic ballet,
you know!"
The girl assures him that there is no mistake about the matter at
all. There is the bed, made according to German notions of how a
bed should be made. He can make the best of it and try to go to
sleep upon it, or he can be sulky and go to sleep on the floor.
He is very much surprised. It looks to him the sort of bed that a
man would make for himself on coming home late from a party. But it
is no use arguing the matter with the girl.
"All right," he says; "bring me a pillow, and I'll risk it!"
The chambermaid explains that there are two pillows on the bed
already, indicating, as she does so, two flat cushions, each one a
yard square, placed one on top of the other at one end of the
mixture.
"These!" exclaims the weary traveller, beginning to feel that he
does not want to go to bed at all. "These are not pillows! I want
something to put my head on; not a thing that comes down to the
middle of my back! Don't tell me that I've got to sleep on these
things!"
But the girl does tell him so, and also implies that she has
something else to do than to stand there all day talking bed-gossip
with him.
"Well, just show me how to start," he says, "which way you get into
it, and then I won't keep you any longer; I'll puzzle out the rest
for myself."
She explains the trick to him and leaves, and he undresses and
crawls in.
