"Do you know Dr. Werner?" the woman asked, and her sad eyes brightened.
"He is my foster-brother," Johanna replied.
"He was my son's best friend," the other said, and her eyes filled with tears. "My poor Paul died in his arms. That is his picture beside Dr. Werner's."
Johanna recollected now that Ludwig had come to Dönninghausen on New Year's eve, two years before, from the death-bed of a friend in Hanover. She soon informed the little circle of this, and that she could tell them of Ludwig.
"What a pity that our father and the little ones are not here!" the blonde sisters said almost together. "But church must soon be over. How glad they will be!"
Johanna at last referred to the business that had brought her here, saying that she wished for lodgings for herself and a little sister, who, after a severe illness, was unable to travel, and that she should need the rooms until the return of the child's mother and step-father from Russia.
The mother and daughters all conducted her across the bright landing to a room with an adjoining bedroom. Here also the walls were only whitewashed. The ceiling was low, and the furniture was old and simple, but everything shone with neatness. The windows looked out upon a little garden, whence the fragrance of flowers floated aloft, and a quiet reigned around that was not all Sabbath stillness.
"You must see the garden!" one of the sisters exclaimed. "There is nothing like it in all Hanover."
"But, Jetta, after your description the Fräulein will be disappointed," said the mother. And, turning to Johanna, she explained: "Our house is part of the remains of an ancient monastery; in the lower story there are still the old vaulted store-rooms. Our neighbour, the florist, has rented them for coal-cellars, and what Jetta calls our garden is only a little terrace which my father-in-law, who was very fond of flowers, laid out upon a continuation of these vaults. He used to grow the rarest tulips and carnations here. We cannot, indeed, do that."
They stepped out into it. The terrace was closed in by a latticed fence covered with clematis. In front there was an extended view of fields and meadows, hedge-rows, a little stream bordered by willows, small stretches of woodland, and a couple of villages. On the right it was shaded by the aged lindens in the neighbour's garden, which must also have dated from the palmy days of the monastery. In the centre there was a large bed, which had probably once contained the father-in-law's floral treasures, but which was now devoted to salad and herbs, surrounded, however, by a thick border of lavender in full bloom. On the right there was a perfect thicket of syringas, lilacs, jessamine, and hawthorn, in which the finches were singing merrily.