"What is to be seen there, then?" said Schmidt.
"Oh!" quoth the tailor, "don't you see, it's all over stripes; but it seems to me very small."
"Shall we go in?" asked the Brewer; "it only costs a sechser,"[2] (six cents.)
"Yes, the devil take the sechsers!" said the shoemaker, with an important shake of the head; "one of their sechsers is just as quickly spent as a sechser with us at home, and yet yonder it's only six pfennings, and here it's four-and-twenty! I won't go with you; I have too much need of my few kreutzers, for the brewer had the blacking that I hoped to earn a couple of dollars by."
"But, shoemaker," said the brewer, "don't be offended, but that was—very—well, I don't know how to express myself mildly enough—but very stupid of you, just when there was an alarm of fire to put your blacking in the window."
"Well; but how could I tell that there was going to be a fire?" asked the other, surprised.
"Well, perhaps not exactly; yet—never mind, shoemaker, that can be made up again, and the six cents can't cling to your heart now; so come along—we must have a look at this wonderful creature."
With these words he stepped forward, and immediately afterwards, accompanied by his companions, walked through a small glass door covered with a green curtain, into the house.
The interior of the narrow and low room which they now stepped into, by no means resembled a menagerie in other respects, for on the right hand stood a small table, like a bar-counter, covered with bottles and glasses, and several persons were seated, or lounged about the room, while, on the left-hand was fixed a square box with wire trellis-work, something like a rather massive bird-cage, and therein sat a little innocent pig, on which one might faintly recognise the wonderful stripes which passed across his body.
The four Germans paid their six cents and a quarter and viewed the pig. The shoemaker, however, shaking his head, thought it very hard that one should pay so much money to see a creature like that.