“Why, what have you heard, gracious lady?” said Burgher Jans, abandoning his refuge by the door, and coming forwards into the centre of the room. “No bad news, I trust, from the young and well-born Herr?”
“Read,” said the widow, extending the letter in her hand towards him; “read for yourself and see.”
His owlish eyes all expanded with delight through the tortoise-shell spectacles, the fat little man eagerly took hold of the rustling piece of paper and unfolded it, his hands trembling with nervous anxiety to know what the missive contained—and which he had been all along burning with curiosity to find out.
Lorischen actually snorted with indignation.
“There, just see that!” she grumbled through her set teeth, opening and clenching her fingers together convulsively, as if she would like to snatch the letter away from him—when, perhaps, she would have expressed her feelings pretty forcibly in the way of scratches on the Burgher’s beaming face: “there, I wouldn’t have let him see it if he had gone down on his bended knees for it—no, not if I had died first!”
The widow continued to sob in her handkerchief; while the Burgher appeared to gloat over the delicate angular handwriting of the letter, as if he were learning it by heart and spelling out every word—he took so long over it.
“Ah, it is bad, gracious lady,” he said at length; “but, still, not so bad as it might otherwise be.”
Madame Dort raised her tear-stained face, looking at the little roan questioningly; while Lorischen, who in her longing to hear about Fritz had not quitted the apartment, according to her usual custom when Burgher Jans was in it, drew nearer, resting her impulsive fingers on the table, so as not to alarm that worthy unnecessarily and make him stop speaking.
The Burgher felt himself a person of importance, on account of his opinion being consulted; so he drew himself up to his full height—just five feet one inch!
“The letter only says, most worthy and gracious lady,—and you, dearest maiden,” he proceeded—with a special bow to Lorischen, which the latter, sad to relate, only received with a grimace from her tightly drawn spinster lips—“that the young and well-born Herr is merely grievously wounded, and not, thanks be to Providence, that he is—he is—he is—”