"If you know it better, dear, tell it yourself."
One oyster looked at the other, and both laughed aloud. Well, when such a fat oyster--for the Frau Syndic was fat, and Frau Krummhorn was also well-to-do--laughs so at another, it makes a great impression upon people, and as a natural consequence the company laid their knitting in their laps, and looked at the oysters.
"Good heavens!" cried the hostess, at last, "what do you know?"
"Frau Krummhorn may tell," said Frau Syndic, coolly. "She saw it as well as I."
Frau Krummhorn was a good woman, she could relate well and skilfully; but her gift of the gab had one failing, it was like Protonotary Scharfer's legs,--rudderless; and just like the protonotary, she was obliged to call out to one and another, "Hold me fast!" or "Turn me round!" She began: "Yes, he came right across the market-place."
"Who?" asked a stupid little assessor, who could not comprehend the business.
"Keep still!" cried everybody.
"So, he came right across the market-place. I knew him again directly, he had bought himself a new suit, of my husband, a black dress-coat, and blue trousers, eh, what do I say! a blue dress-coat and black trousers: I can see him, as if it were yesterday, he always wore yellow-leather breeches and boot-tops,--or was that Fritz Triddelsitz? I really am not quite sure. Yes, what was I saying?"
"He came right across the market-place," said a chorus of three voices.
"Exactly! He came right across the market-place, and into the Frau Syndic's street, I had just gone into Frau Syndic's, for she wanted to show me her new curtains, they came from the Jew Hirsch's,--no, I know,--the Jew Bären's, who has lately become bankrupt. It is remarkable, my husband says, how all our Jews become bankrupt, and yet grow richer all the time, no Christian merchant can compete with these confounded Jews. How far had I got?"