Mrs. Tiralla laughed. "Nonsense, I know mushrooms very well."
"That makes no difference," exclaimed the maid, growing warm, "I won't eat them even if I do know them. Ugh!" she spat on the ground, "mushrooms are the devil's own vegetables."
"Why?" The woman looked at the maid with dull, wide-open eyes, in which a dawning light suddenly began to gleam. She turned red and pale by turns, blinked her eyes a little as though something were dazzling her, and then smiled. "What do you mean by 'the devil's own vegetables'? I don't understand you."
Marianna made the sign of the cross. "God bless it! But I don't know if even that always helps. Many a one has got his death from eating a dish of mushrooms. Who can say which are poisonous and which are not? Good and bad ones grow side by side; the devil passes his finger over them during the night, and in the morning they all look alike, you can't see any difference. You gather, you cook, you eat--oh!" Marianna stretched out her fingers and rolled her eyes. "Holy Mother. I know how awfully you suffer. I won't eat mushrooms, I know that." She shuddered.
"Well, you needn't eat any, nobody has asked you to," said the woman, soothingly, to the girl, who grew more and more vehement. "You hadn't eaten mushrooms that time you fell ill. Oh, we know all about it," she said jestingly, shaking her finger at her. But it was no real jest, for all merriment was wanting, and there was something forced in her laugh as she added, "Jendrek has let it out; you had drunk too much, and that was why you were ill."
"Oh, the rogue, the scoundrel," cried Marianna furiously, clenching her fist. "How can he say so? The liar! I hadn't drunk too much; I had drunk nothing, I remember it well. It was the day after the master had been to Gnesen to fetch the rat poison. I had drunk nothing that morning but a sip of coffee, a sip of the coffee I was taking to the master. I can swear to that."
The maid cast an inquisitive, scrutinizing glance at her mistress. Would she turn red, or pale? Now it was out; what had been the matter with that coffee? Would she be brazen-faced enough to scold her because she had drunk some of the master's coffee? Well, then, she would just give her a piece of her mind, she would let her know that there had been poison in it.
Mrs. Tiralla, however, took no notice of what had been said.
Marianna kept her eyes fixed on her mistress. Who could say what the Pani was thinking of now? But no deeper colour came into Mrs. Tiralla's face. The maid felt quite bewildered. What! the Pani remained so calm, she neither looked terrified nor changed colour? Why, she was even smiling like an angel from heaven. She would have to get to the bottom of this. So she quickly said in a bold, resolute voice:
"I had only drunk some of the coffee which the Pani herself had made; I can't imagine how that could have made me so ill." She shrugged her shoulders and put on her most stupid and innocent look, whilst her sly eyes roved about. "The Pani would surely not cook anything bad for the master."