For a moment it looked as it Miss Falbe would return a sharp answer; she was often that unaccountable; but she stopped and let it pass with a dry apology, “that she had mistaken,” as she expressed it.
Then she left the company.
“That’s always the way with Miss Falbe,” exclaimed Mrs. With, when the door was closed. “Something disagreeable’s always tagging after her.”
“She is so dreadfully severe,” said Mrs. Bentzen.
“I fear she lacks the proper spirit,” said the chaplain with a mild solemnity.
“So far as I know,” insinuated the police-chief’s wife in her guileless tone, “Miss Falbe is not a member of any charitable organization in town.”
“No, we had her with us at first in the Foundling’s Home,” answered Mrs. Bentzen. “But she was so unmanageable and domineering, and at last came the story of the quack doctor.”
This story was then related. It was the more suitable for the occasion, as it turned just on this same Elsie, whom Miss Falbe had presented. The wife of the police-chief inquired very anxiously about the difference between the ages of Miss Falbe and the young girl—a shrewdness which the chaplain could not fail to recognize to himself.
When just then Dr. Bentzen came in—he was the family physician—they had already had a full account of the whole scandal.
When he heard what they were talking about, he turned his red nose up in air, and began to rake down the Ark from top to bottom, in a torrent of words. It was a disgrace to the whole town; Puppelena was a thieves’ go-between, who kept a dolt of a musician to fool the police. Miss Falbe and her brother were of about the same stripe; but when he came to Madam Speckbom and Loppen, he talked himself into such a fury that his wife, as was her wont, had to go over to him, and soothe him, and gently push him out of doors.