“You are not betrothed to the Herr Pastor, Fräulein Dora?”
“No, indeed, he has never asked me,” she replied, laughing and blushing a little, but looking up into his face with childlike, innocent directness. Perhaps little Dora was scarcely the beauty that Karl fancied her; Anna’s description, “a baby face, and frightened ways,” was much more accurate than any he could have given. But her large, blue eyes, with their long, golden lashes, were really beautiful; and nothing could have so moved the man beside her as the sight of that shy timidity, changed into calm reliance on his strength.
“But you would not marry him, nicht wahr? He is poor, he is a fool, and he has six children.”
“And he is very ugly,” said naughty Dora, deserting, without a pang, her oldest friend in America.
“He is very ugly indeed,” said Karl Metzerott, in a tone of deep conviction; “God be thanked therefor.”
And Dora, though she laughed and blushed still deeper, found it most convenient not to inquire his exact meaning.
CHAPTER II.
THE PASTOR’S BLUE APRON.
Pastor Schaefer was in serious trouble. It was the 22d of December, and his Christmas sermon was still unprepared: worse still, it stood every possible chance of remaining so; for how on earth was a man to consider texts, headings, arguments, or perorations, who had a house and six small children to care for, and a housekeeper whose brother had just been inconsiderate enough to die? In truth, however, it was rather the housekeeper who should be blamed for want of consideration, since the brother would very likely have remained alive if he had been consulted about the matter; whereas Mary, the housekeeper, could certainly have restrained her grief sufficiently to take the sausages off the fire!
It was early that same morning that it had all happened, though the brother had been in a dying condition for several weeks, ever since he had fallen from a ladder during the operation of hod-carrying, and fractured his skull. Therefore Mary’s mind had certainly had time to prepare itself for the shock; indeed the pastor’s children had become so accustomed to hearing her shriek wildly every time there came a knock at the door, under the supposition that the knocker brought news of her brother’s death, that, when this event really happened, little Bruno, the third from youngest, said solemnly, “Poor Mary’s brother is dead again;” but nobody supposed it was actually so.
“You had better hold still, and have your hair brushed,” said Christina a little sharply. Poor Tina was only nine years old, yet felt herself, as the eldest, responsible for the family; and the responsibility was apt to re-act on her temper. So they all hurried to finish dressing (for the odors of breakfast were unusually strong), and descended in procession to the kitchen, Tina first, leading Heinz, who was two and a half, and apt, when left to himself, to make only one step, and that head first, from bedroom to kitchen. He had fallen downstairs and landed on his head so often, that Tina said she did not believe he minded it at all. Next to him came Bruno, with Gretchen, who was six, and a person to whom nothing, good or bad, ever happened; then Franz, who was eight, and very useful in splitting wood, clearing away snow, and running errands; and then the father, carrying Lena, the six-months-old baby, at whose birth their mother had died.