"Now, now," said Frau Kummerfelden, "you mustn't say anything about the raven-mother--she's a splendid old soul."
"Soul, perhaps ... but a little too much body with it!" said the little woman, spinning round to emphasize her dainty figure.
"Well, facts are facts," said Frau Kummerfelden. "The raven-mother is perhaps a trifle massively built. To be sure, last winter, when I was full of all kinds of pains, she picked me up out of bed and put me in again like a child. It's true she puffed and snorted over it as if she'd been Saint Christopher, which wouldn't suit everybody."
"No, no, no," said the little widow, "one must know how to move without making a noise."
One day the pretty little woman said, "It's time for me to be getting home now--my gentlemen will be waiting for me. One of them will need me to get his beer for him."
"Gentlemen?" said the captain, taken aback. "What kind of gentlemen have you got?"
"For board and lodging," she said; and her merry heart-shaped face with its round brown eyes looked up rather challengingly at the old soldier.
"The devil!" he cried.
"What's the matter with you?" said Frau Kummerfelden. "It's a very good thing that Providence has sent a couple of decent, sensible men into this part of the town, or how should the poor thing live?"
The captain laughed a little awkwardly. When she had gone, he got up stiffly from the table and walked about the room. "That boarder business doesn't please me at all," he said crossly.