"Bless your heart, what should I do in there, among all you young people? No, no, I can hear just as well where I am. When my good husband had his evenings, it was always from the kitchen that I listened."
Pausing, with a saucepan in one hand, a cloth in the other, she said: "You will hear something good to-night, Herr Guest. Oh, he has talent, great talent, has young Schilsky! This is not the usual work of a pupil. It has form, and it has ideas, and it is new and daring. I know one of the motives from hearing Franz play it," and she hummed a theme as she replaced on the shelf, the scrupulously cleaned pot. "For such a young man, it is wonderful; but he will do better still, depend upon it, he will."
Here she threw a hasty glance round the tiny kitchen, at three of the children sitting as still as mice in the corner, laid a finger on her lips, and, bursting with mystery, leaned over the table and asked Maurice if he could keep a secret.
"He is going away," she whispered.
Maurice stared at her. "Going away? Who is? What do you mean?" he asked, and was so struck by her peculiar manner that he set his cup down untouched.
"Why Schilsky, of course." She thought his astonishment was disbelief, and nodded confirmingly. "Yes, yes, he is going away. And soon, too."
"How do you know?" cried Maurice. Sitting back in his chair, he stemmed his hands against the edge of the table, and looked challengingly at Frau Furst.
"Ssh—not so loud," said the latter. "It's a secret, a dead secret—though I'm sure I don't know why. Franz——"
At this very moment, Franz himself came into the kitchen. He looked distrustfully at his whispering mother.
"Now then, mother, haven't you got that beer yet?" he demanded. His genial bonhomie disappeared, as if by magic, when he entered his home circle, and he was particularly gruff with this adoring woman.