"Ah!" interposed Louise, "father has certainly some important business with the old man, and aunt knows about it, and so she has told us that story about Mining. What, should father be doing with such nonsense?"
The pike pressed his teeth deeper into Frau Nüssler's flesh; but she set her own teeth together, and held out.
"Eh, see!" cried she, "Louise, you are dreadfully clever! Clever children are a blessing for their parents, but"--here she suddenly pulled her thumb from the pike's teeth;--"I wish you had been a good deal more stupid. I will tell you; Mining isn't there, it is the gracious Frau from Pumpelhagen, who has some business to attend to with Karl and Moses."
The little Frau Pastorin was quite vexed, partly because she was not sooner informed, for, in her own house, she was surely the nearest, partly because, after long years, she had, for the first time, discovered that her good neighbour Frau Nüssler was capable of the most horrible, unchristian lying.
"And that story was all a lie then?" she inquired.
"Yes, Frau Pastorin," said Frau Nüssler, looking like one of the condemned.
"Frau Nüssler," said the Frau Pastorin, and it seemed as if an invisible hand had dropped upon her shoulders the little black mantle of her sainted pastor, "lying is a horrible, unchristian vice."
"I know it, Frau Pastorin; I never lied for myself, in my life. When I tell lies, it is only for the benefit of other people. I thought it would be too bad for the poor Frau, who is in such trouble, to be plagued with questions, and since you all took her for Mining I merely said yes, and made up a little story."
It seemed now as if the invisible hand had endowed the Frau Pastorin with her blessed Pastor's bands also, and she began:
"Dear, you are in a dreadful state, you are lying at this very moment, you think that is right which is wrong, you lie----"