"Good day, Roswitha, my, but you are merry. What is Annie doing?"
"She is asleep, your Ladyship."
As Roswitha said this she turned red and quickly breaking off the conversation, started toward the house to help her Ladyship change her clothes. For it was doubtful whether Johanna was there. She hung around a good deal over at the "office" nowadays, because there was less to do at home and Frederick and Christel were too tedious for her and never knew anything.
Annie was still asleep. Effi leaned over the cradle, then had her hat and raincoat taken off and sat down upon the little sofa in her bedroom. She slowly stroked back her moist hair, laid her feet on a stool, which Roswitha drew up to her, and said, as she evidently enjoyed the comfort of resting after a rather long walk: "Roswitha, I must remind you that Kruse is married."
"I know it, your Ladyship."
"Yes, what all doesn't one know, and yet one acts as though one did not know. Nothing can ever come of this."
"Nothing is supposed to come of it, your Ladyship."
"If you think she is an invalid you are reckoning without your host. Invalids live the longest. Besides she has the black chicken. Beware of it. It knows everything and tattles everything. I don't know, it makes me shudder. And I'll wager all that business upstairs has some connection with this chicken."
"Oh, I don't believe it. But it is terrible just the same, and Kruse, who always sides himself against his wife, cannot talk me out of it."
"What did he say?"