“Of course you know that Karl Metzerott and Dora Weglein are betrothed?”
The pastor, still in his blue apron, sat somewhat uneasily upon a chair much too high for his short legs. A sufficiently grotesque figure, one would have said, even if his hair had not been so very rumpled, and the hands upon his thin, aproned knees so very grimy; yet, as he straightened his meagre figure and looked Frau Kellar full in the face, there was an unselfish distress upon his ugly little face that dignified his whole personality.
“That man!” he said, “that infidel, that free-thinker!”
“Well, one knew it was sure to happen,” replied Frau Kellar, with a shrug of her ample shoulders; “he has been her shadow ever since the Kaffee-Visite.”
“I tried to hinder it,” said the pastor boldly. “Fräulein Dora is good and pious, and she has no right to marry an atheist. But she only grew angry with me,” he added sadly.
“Of course,” answered Frau Kellar with a laugh, “folks who meddle with mating birds must expect a peck or two. Well, I have no fault to find with Karl, for my part. He is as steady as a rock, and if he chooses to think for himself, it’s no more than every one does nowadays. After all, too little religion is better than too much beer,” she added sagely.
The pastor shook his head. “That may follow,” he said.
“Hardly,” she replied; then, with an access of boldness, “but if she had listened to my advice, Herr Pastor, she would have taken you.”
The pastor did not resent her freedom of speech. “She is very beautiful,” he said sadly, “and who would marry a man with six children, if she could do better?”
Frau Kellar regarded the figure before her with some inward amusement, as she mentally contrasted Dora’s two suitors. “I wonder,” she thought, “if he really considers the six children his only drawback.” Then she said aloud, “If you really wish to know, Herr Pastor, I will tell you. My niece Lottie in there would marry you to-morrow if you asked her.”