"Eh, Bräsig, why are they not coming?"
"Well, because of the apron."
"The apron?"
"Yes, because it was wet."
"Whose apron was wet?"
"Why, Frau Kählert's. But we will eat our dinner, the fish will get cold."
"Not a morsel!" cried the Frau Pastorin, and put a couple of plates over the fish, and over those a napkin, and over that her plump hands, and looked so wildly at Bräsig with her round eyes, that he could no longer persist in his rôle, but burst out: "It is all out, Frau Pastorin, and they are convicted, and we have most of the money again."
"And do you tell me that now, first?" cried the little Frau, and jumped up from the table, and was running up to Habermann. Bräsig would not allow that, and, by promising to tell her everything, brought her back to the sofa.
"Frau Pastorin," said he, "the chief thing that is, the principal indicium, came out through Kählertsch, that is to say, not properly, of her own accord, but through her wicked jealousy, which is a dreadfully powerful feeling in many women, and produces the most terrible consequences. I don't mean you, by that, I only mean Kählertsch. You see the woman had made up her mind to marry the weaver, and the weaver would'nt have her. Now, she is rightly of the opinion that the weaver's divorced wife wishes to marry him again, herself, and she lies in wait for them, and so it happened once that her apron--I mean Kählertsch's--was wet, and she was going to dry it on the garden fence. While she was there, half concealed behind the fence, she saw the weaver and his divorced wife, holding a rendezvous,--well, you know what that is, Frau Pastorin----"
"Bräsig, I tell you----"