widow's best friend!

Some days after Madaleine Vogelstein's first letter, Madame Dort
received a second, telling her that the ball had been extracted from her
son's wound, but fever had come on, making him very weak and prostrate;
although, as his good constitution had enabled him to survive the
painful operation, he would probably pull through this second ordeal.

The widow again grew down-hearted at this intelligence, and it was as
much as Burgher Jans could do, with all his plausibility, to make her
hopeful; while Lorischen, her old superstitious fears and belief in
Mouser's prophetic miaow-wowing again revived, did all her best to
negative the fat little man's praiseworthy efforts at cheering. Ever
since the Burgher had been elected a confidant of Madaleine's original
communication, he had made a point of calling every day in the Gulden
Strasse, with his, to the old nurse, sickening and stereotyped
inquiry--"Any news yet?" until the field post brought the next despatch,
when, as he now naturally expected and wished, the letter was given him
to read.

"He seems bent on hanging up his hat in our lobby here!" Lorischen
would say spitefully, on the widow seeking to excuse the little man's
pertinacity in visiting her. "Much he cares whether poor Master Fritz
gets well or ill; he takes more interest in somebody else, I think!"

"Oh, Lorischen!" Madame Dort would remonstrate. "How can you say such
things?"

"It is `Oh, mistress!' it strikes me," the other would retort. "I wish
the young master were only here!"

"And so do I heartily," said Madame Dort, at the end of one of these
daily skirmishes between the two on the same subject. "We agree on that
point, at all events!" and she sighed heavily. The old servant was so
privileged a person that she did not like to speak harshly to her,
although she did not at all relish Lorischen's frequent allusions as to
the real object of the Burgher's visits, and her surmises as to what the
neighbours would think about them. Madame Dort put up with Lorischen's
innuendoes in silence, but still, she did not look pleased.

"Ach Himmel, dear mistress!" pleaded the offender, "never mind my
waspish old tongue. I am always saying what I shouldn't; but that
little fat man does irritate me with his hypocritical, oily smile and
smooth way--calling me his `dearest maiden,' indeed!"

"Why, don't you see, Lorischen, that it is you really whom he comes here
after, although you tre