at him so cruelly!" said the widow, smiling.

This was more than the old spinster could bear.

"What, me!" she exclaimed, with withering scorn. "Himmel, if I thought
that, I would soon scratch his chubby face for him--me, indeed!" and she
retreated from the room in high dudgeon.

Bye-and-bye, there came another letter from the now familiar
correspondent, saying that Fritz was really recovering at last; and, oh
what happiness! the mother's heart was rejoiced by the sight of a few
awkwardly scrawled lines at the end. It was a postscript from her son
himself!

The almost indecipherable words were only "Love to Mutterchen, from her
own Fritz," but they were more precious to her than the lengthiest
epistle from any one else.

"Any news?" asked Burgher Jans of Lorischen soon afterwards, when he
came to the house to make his stereotyped inquiry.

"Yes," said the old nurse, instead of replying with her usual negative.

"Indeed!" exclaimed the little man. "The noble, well-born young Herr is
not worse, I hope?" and he tried to hide his abnormally bland expression
with a sympathetic look of deep concern; but he failed miserably in the
attempt. His full-moon face could not help beaming with a self-
satisfied complacency which it was impossible to subdue; indeed, he
would have been unable to disguise this appearance of smiling, even if
he had been at a funeral and was, mentally, plunged in the deepest woe--
if that were possible for him to be!

"No, not worse," answered Lorischen. "He is--"

"Not dead, I trust?" said Burgher Jans, interrupting her before she
could finish her sentence, and using in his hurry the very word to which
he had objected before.

"No, he is not dead," retorted the old nurse, with a triumphant ring in
her voice. "And, if you were expecting that, I only hope you are
disappointed, that's all! He is getting better, for he has written to
the mistress himself; and, what is more, he's coming home to send you to
the right-about, Burgher Jans, and stop your coming here any more. Do
you hear that, eh?"

"My dearest maiden," commenced to stammer out the little fat man,
woefully taken aback by this outburst, "I--I--don't know what you mean."

"Ah, but I do," returned Lorischen, not feeling any the more amiably
disposed towards him by his addressing her in that way after what Madame
Dort had said about his calling especially to see her. "I know what I
mean; and what I mean to say now, is, that my m