"Yes," said my uncle. "Do you think that with these roads and in this weather you could walk three or four miles at a stretch, for no conveyance is to be had--and besides it would not be secret enough?"
"Herr Rathsherr," she said, and all desire to laugh entirely left her, "look at me for a moment. Is it likely I could? Why, it's hard work for me now to go upstairs."
"Can you ride then?"
"What?"
"I ask, can you ride?"
Mamsell Westphalen now got up, set her arms a-kimbo and said: "What respectable woman ever rides? I have known one female in my life who did; she was a young lady, and the rest of her conduct was of a piece with it."
Rathsherr Herse now also got up, and walked once or twice up and down the kitchen, lost in thought, and at last asked--"Do you think you could sit for twenty-four hours in the town peat-bog?"
"But, Herr Rathsherr," said Mamsell Westphalen, and put her apron up to her eyes again and wiped away the tears, "I'm now over fifty, and I had my great illness last autumn and...."
"Then that won't do either," broke in the Rathsherr. "There are only two ways left, one upstairs, the other down below. Fly you must, either on to the roof or into the cellar."
"Herr Rathsherr," cried Fritz Sahlmann, and he crept from behind the stove, "I know a place."