Here she paused and restored her gift to its old place. She had seen the Junker’s plucked present, and continued in an altered tone: “So you already have a pigeon—so much the better! The city clerk’s little girl is beginning to droop too. I’ll see you to-morrow, if God wills.”
She was about to go, but Georg stopped her, saying: “You are mistaken, my good lady. I shot that bird to-day, I’ll confess now, Frau Barbara; my corvus is a wretched crow.”
“I thought so,” cried the widow. “Such an abomination!”
Yet she thrust her finger into the bird’s breast, saying: “But there’s meat on the creature.”
“A crow!” cried Wilhelm’s mother, clasping her hands. “True, dogs and cats are already hanging on many a spit and have wandered into many a pan. There is the pigeon.”
Barbara unwrapped the bird as carefully, as if it might crumble under her fingers, gazing tenderly at it as she weighed it carefully in her hand; but the musician’s mother said:
“It’s the fourth one Wilhelm has killed, and he said it would have been a good flier. He intended it specially for your Bessie. Stuff it nicely with yellow paste, not too solid and a little sweetened. That is what children like, and it will agree with her, for it is cheerfully given. Put the little thing away. When we have known any creature, we feel sorry to see it dead.”
“May God reward you!” cried Barbara, pressing the kind old hand. “Oh! these terrible times!”
“Yet there is still something to be thankful for.”
“Of course, for it will be even worse in hell,” replied the widow.