Just then Dr. Beulah and half a dozen visitors—some of them gentlemen—entered the classroom. The situation was tragic—for poor Bess. There stood Frau Deuseldorf in commanding attitude, her back to the door, unconscious of the approach of the preceptress and her friends, and waving the unfinished bit of crocheting in the air.
“For why did you come here to Lakeview, Miss?” demanded the teacher. “To knit—to sew—to play? Ach! I do not teach a class in baby-doll r-r-rags, I hope! Remove yourself to the platform, Miss. Take this—this plaything with you. Sit down there that the other pupils may see how you employ your hands and mind in class——”
She turned majestically and saw the amused visitors. Even Dr. Beulah seemed to relish the situation, for her eyes twinkled and her lips twitched a little as she said—to cover the German lady’s confusion:
“The time is not propitious for a visit to your class, Madam, I can plainly see. We will withdraw.”
She did not speak sternly; but Nan—who was watching—saw that Frau Deuseldorf turned strangely pallid and that her hands shook as she went back to her desk, following the angry and tearful Bess. After a moment, when the girls had settled into something like their usual calm, and had stopped giggling, the lady leaned over and patted Bess softly on the shoulder.
“Never mind, my dear,” she said, her voice vibrant with some feeling that the girls who heard her did not understand. “Put the foolish trifle on my desk here and go back to your book. You are punished enough. Ach! perhaps I am, too.”
And Nan Sherwood noted the fact that the German lady was much troubled during the rest of the session. She wondered why.
Like several of the instructors at Lakeview Hall, Frau Deuseldorf did not sleep on the premises. “Mister” Frau Deuseldorf kept a delicatessen shop in town and the couple had rooms behind the shop. The German instructor’s husband, whom all the girls called “Mister Frau Deuseldorf,” was a pursy, self-important little man, with a bristling pompadour and mustache. He was like a gnome with a military bearing—if you can imagine such a person!
When Frau Deuseldorf put her heavily shod foot over the threshold of the delicatessen shop she at once became the typical German hausfrau, and nothing else. Her University training was set aside. She cooked her husband’s dinner with her own hands and then served him in approved German style.
It was the very afternoon of Bess Harley’s trouble in German class that Nan and she chanced to have an errand in town and obtained permission from Mrs. Cupp to go there. The girls often bought delicacies of Mister Deuseldorf—his cheeses and wurst had quite a special flavor, and he made lovely potato salad that often graced the secret banquets at Lakeview Hall.