Frau Kummerfelden put up both her busy hands to her big cap, as if to protect it from hearing impossible things. "Lord save us!" she said. "There's no use talking to people like you."
When Captain Rauchfuss's daughter had reached her seventeenth year, it came to pass that the old man got involved in a love-affair. On his Sunday visits to Frau Kummerfelden about this time he had often found there a neat little widow who professed a charming devotion to her old teacher. After her husband's death she had been left in poor circumstances. She came to consult Frau Kummerfelden very seriously about a project of settling down in Weimar as a nurse; and she made it all so touching and edifying that the captain, who happened to be present at some of these discussions, found his heart growing quite warm. Moreover, the little woman had a fascinating heart-shaped face, broad in the brow and pointed at the chin, and a pair of round, merry brown eyes.
"That'd be the kind of nurse for me," said the captain; "a lively creature, who'd make the whole business look less bad. It would be rather fun!"
"Shame on you, old simpleton!" said Frau Kummerfelden crossly.
"Well, but, Kummerfelden," said the captain, "you're a stately old frigate with that cap of yours. A light modern craft like our Marianne sails in different waters from such a venerable ship of virtue--eh, Frau Marianne?"
"Oh, really, captain," pouted the little woman. "Do you think I am not serious about all this?" And once more she paraded her virtues and her edifying design before the eyes of the good old woman and Herr Rauchfuss.
"A devil of a girl!" muttered the captain in his red beard.
"Oh yes," said the neat little woman, making a charming gesture with her little heart-shaped head, about which she had tied a snow-white three-cornered piece of linen to give herself a tidy and almost nunlike appearance--"oh yes, I like that! A devil of a girl.... Well, you'll find out what sort of a girl I am if you ever get into my hands! I'd take charge of the cooking as well--nobody knows how to get up tempting little dishes for an invalid's appetite, so that his spirits begin to come back to him at the very smell of the broth I make him. And another thing I may say--with me a patient can save on doctors' visits. I learned a great many things from my poor mother--all kinds of wonderful remedies, for gout and things like that ... the doctors' noses are out of joint.
"Haven't got it!" said the captain.
"Well, so much the better," said the little woman. "But I should be in demand, I think. For who is there now? A couple of old slow-coaches, that rattle at every move they make, and your friend the old raven-mother, Frau Kummerfelden, whose rough paws would kill anything at all delicate."