She had not much to buy, it is true; but then she might have a gossip with the neighbours and hear some news, perhaps—who knows?
Anything might have happened without the knowledge of herself or her mistress, as no one, not even Burgher Jans, had been to visit them for ever so long!
Clad, therefore, in her thick cloak and warm boots, with her wide, red-knitted woollen shawl over her head and portly market-basket on arm, Lorischen sallied out like the dove from the ark, hoping perchance to bring back with her an olive branch of comfort; while the widow sat herself down by the stove in the parlour with her needle, stitching away at some new shirts she was engaged on to renew Fritz’s wardrobe when he came back. Seeing an opportunity for taking up a comfortable position, Mouser jumped up at once into her lap as soon as the old nurse had left the room, purring away with great complacency and watching in a lazy way the movements of her busy fingers, blinking sleepily the while at the glowing fire in front of him.
Lorischen had not been gone long when Madame Dort heard her bustling back up the staircase without. She knew the old nurse’s step well; but, besides hers, she heard the tread of some one else, and then the noisy bark of a dog. A sort of altercation between two voices followed, in which the old nurse’s angry accents were plainly perceptible; and next there seemed a hurried scuffle just without the parlour door, which suddenly burst open with a clatter, and two people entered the room.
They were Lorischen and Burgher Jans, who both tried to speak together, the result being a confused jangle of tongues from which Madame Dort could learn nothing.
“I say I was first!” squeaked the Burgher in a high treble key, which he always adopted when excited beyond his usual placid mode of utterance.
“And I say it was me!” retorted the old nurse in her gruff tones, which were much more like those of a man. “What right have you to try and supplant the servant of the house, who specially went out about it, you little meddlesome teetotum, I’d like to know, hey?”
“But I was first, I say! Madame Dort—”
“Don’t listen to him, mistress,” interposed Lorischen. “I’ve just—”
“There’s news of—”