His wife looked in "Well, Father, what is it?"
The burgomaster took his hat. "Freyer is here!"
"Good Heavens!" She clasped her hands in amazement.
"Yes, it was a great excitement to me. Tell Anastasia, that she may not learn the news from strangers. She has long been resigned, but of course this will move her deeply! And above all, don't let anything be said about it in the shop, I don't want the tidings to get abroad in the village, at least through us. Farewell!"
The burgomaster's family enjoyed a small prerogative: the salt monopoly, and a little provision store where the tireless industry of the self-sacrificing wife collected a few groschen, "If I don't make something--who will?" she used to say, with a keen thrust at her husband's absence of economy. So the burgomaster did not mention his extravagance in connection with the boots and coat. He could not bear even just reproaches now. "A man was often compelled to exceed his means in a position like his"--but women did not understand that. Therefore, as usual, he fled from domestic lectures to the inaccessible regions of his office.
The burgomaster's sister no longer lived in the same house. As she grew older, she had moved into one near the church which she inherited from her mother, where she lived quietly alone.
"Yes, who's to run over to Stasi," lamented the burgomaster's wife, "when we all have our hands full. As if she wouldn't hear it soon enough. He'll never marry her! Rosel, Rosel!"
The burgomaster's youngest daughter, the predestined Mary of the future, came in from the shop.
"Run up to your aunt and tell her that Herr Freyer has come back, your father says so!"
"Will he play the Christus again?" asked the child.