She shrugged her shoulders, laughing lightly. "Women's squabbles," she explained; "I can easily put that right."
"I never asked you the reason of that feud," said he; "but perhaps now the time has come when I may."
"Don't be curious, beloved," she whispered, and at this moment, noticing that the bailiffs had done rolling up their serviettes, she threw them a friendly "Gesegneter Mahlzeit," accompanied by a fascinating smile, which filled the poor devils, who were a long way off being society men, with extreme delight. "Doesn't it seem, Uli, as if the whole of your staff were in love with your little wife?" she asked, when they were alone together, nestling within his arm to receive the customary kiss after meals.
He was going to administer an affectionate rebuke, for this kind of pleasantry was abhorrent to him, when he remarked that her whole body trembled with excitement.
"What is the matter?" he asked in alarm.
She drew away from him quickly. "With me!" she laughed; "what should be the matter? The carriage will be round at four. Yes?"
XIX
On the outskirts of Halewitz Park, half hidden in the shrubs, there stood a lonely, grey, one-storied house, the five windows of which were surrounded by stucco spirals and flourishes, which gave it an air of incongruous frivolity. The front looked out on a field path, while the gable and back walls were buried in the greenery of the park.
No sound of what was going on in the courtyard of the great house penetrated here, only from time to time a plough or a harvest waggon passed on its way home, and the melodious shout of a half-childish woman's voice, the joyous barking of a playful dog echoing it, came through the thicket. Every morning, at an early hour, a troop of poorly, though neatly clad children, bare-headed and barefooted, aged from three to seven, assembled at the gate, the little ones holding the hands of their elders, or in some cases led by their mothers--wretched, prematurely faded creatures, bowed to the earth with the double burden of work in the fields and child-bearing.
At seven o'clock the iron gate opened, and the children streamed into the pleasance, climbed the steps, and disappeared into the house. Almost directly afterwards the shrill chorus of children's voices was to be heard by passers-by on the road, led by a deep, slightly cracked woman's alto.