It is Christmas Eve again at Lubeck.
The streets as well as the roofs and exteriors of the houses are covered with snow, exhibiting without every appearance of a hard winter; while, within, the interiors are filled with bustling folk, busy with all the myriad and manifold preparations for the coming festival on the morrow.
Mirth, music, and merry-making are everywhere apparent.
In the little old-fashioned house in the Gulden Strasse, where Fritz and Eric were first introduced to the readers notice, these cheery signs of the festive season are even more prominently displayed than usual; for, are not the long-absent wanderers expected back beneath the old roof-tree once more, and is not their coming anticipated at every hour—nay, almost at any moment?
Aye!
Madame Dort is sitting in her accustomed corner of the stove. She is looking ever so much better in health and younger in appearance than she was at the time of that sad celebration of the Christmas anniversary three years ago, detailed in an early chapter of the story; and there is a smile of happiness and content beaming over her face.
The good lady of the house is pretending to be darning a pair of stockings, which she has taken up to keep her fingers busy; but every now and then, she lets the work drop from her hands on to her knees, and looks round the room, as if listening and waiting for some one who will soon be here.
Madaleine, prettier than ever, clad in a gala dress and with bright ribbons in her golden hair, while her rosebud lips are half parted and her blue eyes dancing with joy and excitement, is pacing up and down the room impatiently. She is too eager to sit still!
Mouser, our old friend the cat, is curled up in a round ball between Gelert’s paws on the rug in front of the stove; while, as for Lorischen, she is bustling in and out of the room, placing things on the well-spread table and then immediately taking them away again, quite forgetful of what she is about in her absence of mind and anxiety of expectancy.
Burgher Jans, too, now and again, keeps popping his head through the doorway, to ask if “the high, well-born and noble Herren” have yet come—the little fat man then retiring, with an humble apology for intruding, only to intrude again the next instant!