Four of the Meyer girls were now tall and stately, and all of them as beautiful as could be, and not a year's difference between them. As they grew up, and their virginal charms developed, Mr. Meyer's house became more and more noisy and frequented. The old luxury, frivolity, and extravagance returned, and a perpetual jollity took possession of it. The most select company, moreover, assembled there—counts, barons, gentlemen of high degree, bankers, and other bigwigs.
It is true that it struck Mr. Meyer as somewhat peculiar that when he met these counts and barons in the street they did not seem to see him, and if his girls were with him, they and these friends of theirs did not even exchange looks; but it was his way not to trouble himself about anything unpleasant; besides, he fancied that great folks always behaved like this.
And now his youngest daughter also was growing up; she was already twelve years old, and she promised to be more beautiful than any of her sisters. At present she was in short frocks, and her long thick hair, twisted into two pigtails, dangled down her back. The guests who honoured her father's house with their presence had already begun to ask her, in joke, when she was going to wear long dresses like her sisters.
One day Mr. Meyer had an unusual and
surprising visitor. A bevy of good-humoured youths were flirting with his daughters just then, while papa was smashing flies on the wall at intervals, smiling complacently whenever one of his daughters, startled by an extra loud bang, gave a little shriek, when a knocking was heard at the door. As nobody answered the door, the knocking was repeated twice, much louder each time, and at last one of the jovial young fellows aforesaid jumped up and opened the door, imagining that it was some other merry wag who wanted to surprise them all—and behold! a dry, wrinkled old maid in a shabby black dress stood before the brilliant assembly!
Papa was so frightened by this apparition that his knees knocked together. It was Aunt Teresa!
The old spinster, without deigning to bestow the least attention on the company assembled there, made straight for Mr. Meyer with the utmost composure.
The worthy pater-familias was in the most unspeakable confusion. He knew not whether to ask the old lady to take a chair, or whether to introduce her to the gay throng as his sister, or whether to deny that he knew her. But Teresa herself relieved him from his embarrassment. With a calm and cold look, she said, "I have a few words to say to you, and if you have leisure to quit your guests for a moment or two, be so good as to take me where we may not disturb the company."
Papa Meyer at once accepted this proposal, and, opening the door before her, led her into one of the remoter rooms. They had scarcely closed the door, when a merry laugh arose from the midst of the company which they had just quitted. Papa Meyer thereupon drew Aunt Teresa still further away. Even he was not quite so simple as not to know why the young people in there laughed so uproariously at this old-fashioned spinster of a bygone generation.