“Will you not have a glass of lager, Herr Jans?” said she.
“Mein Gott, yes,” promptly returned the little man. “Much talking makes one dry, and beer is good for the stomach.”
“Lorischen, get the Burgher some lager bier,” ordered Madame Dort, on her invitation being accepted, the old nurse proceeding to execute the command with very ill grace.
“The Lord only knows when he’ll leave now, once he starts guzzling beer in the parlour! That Burgher Jans is getting to be a positive nuisance to us; and I shall be glad when our poor wounded Fritz comes home, if only to stop his coming here so frequently—the gossipping little time-server, with his bowing and scraping and calling me his ‘dearest maiden,’ indeed—I’d ‘maiden’ him if I had the chance!”
Lorischen was much exasperated, and so she grumbled to herself as she sallied out of the room.
However, much to her relief, the “fat little man” did not make a long stay on this occasion, for he took his leave soon after swallowing the beer. He was anxious to make a round of visits amongst his acquaintances, to retail the news that Fritz was wounded and lying in a hospital at Mézières, near Metz, for he had read it himself in the letter, you know! He likewise informed his hearers, although he had not so impressed the widow, that they would probably never see the young clerk of Herr Grosschnapper again in Lubeck, as his case was so desperate that he was not expected to live! His story otherwise, probably, would have been far less interesting to scandal-mongers, as they would have thus lost the opportunity of settling all the affairs of the widow and considering whom she would marry again. Of course, they now decided, that, as she had as good as lost both her sons and had a nice little property of her own, besides being comparatively not old, so to speak, and not very plain, she would naturally seek another partner to console herself in her solitude—Burgher Jans getting much quizzed on this point, with sly allusions as to his being the widow’s best friend!
Some days after Madaleine Vogelstein’s first letter, Madame Dort received a second, telling her that the ball had been extracted from her son’s wound, but fever had come on, making him very weak and prostrate; although, as his good constitution had enabled him to survive the painful operation, he would probably pull through this second ordeal.
The widow again grew down-hearted at this intelligence, and it was as much as Burgher Jans could do, with all his plausibility, to make her hopeful; while Lorischen, her old superstitious fears and belief in Mouser’s prophetic miaow-wowing again revived, did all her best to negative the fat little man’s praiseworthy efforts at cheering. Ever since the Burgher had been elected a confidant of Madaleine’s original communication, he had made a point of calling every day in the Gulden Strasse, with his, to the old nurse, sickening and stereotyped inquiry—“Any news yet?” until the field post brought the next despatch, when, as he now naturally expected and wished, the letter was given him to read.
“He seems bent on hanging up his hat in our lobby here!” Lorischen would say spitefully, on the widow seeking to excuse the little man’s pertinacity in visiting her. “Much he cares whether poor Master Fritz gets well or ill; he takes more interest in somebody else, I think!”
“Oh, Lorischen!” Madame Dort would remonstrate. “How can you say such things?”