her eyes off her daughter, but wrinkled her brown
forehead like an old monkey, and nodded now and again very solemnly. Her
hands shook as she raised her beer mug, and when she had drunk she spat
on the floor and savagely wiped her mouth with her sleeve. Then
the music started and she followed Theresa with her eyes, looking
suspiciously at each man who danced with her.

"Cheer up, old woman," shouted her husband, digging her in the ribs;
"this isn't Theresa's funeral." He winked at the guests, who broke into
loud laughter.

"I AM cheerful," mumbled the old woman, and beat upon the table with
her fist, keeping time to the music, proving she was not out of the
festivities.

"She can't forget how wild Theresa has been," said Frau Ledermann. "Who
could--with the child there? I heard that last Sunday evening Theresa
had hysterics and said that she would not marry this man. They had to
get the priest to her."

"Where is the other one?" asked Frau Brechenmacher. "Why didn't he marry
her?"

The woman shrugged her shoulders.

"Gone--disappeared. He was a traveller, and only stayed at their house
two nights. He was selling shirt buttons--I bought some myself, and they
were beautiful shirt buttons--but what a pig of a fellow! I can't think
what he saw in such a plain girl--but you never know. Her mother says
she's been like fire ever since she was sixteen!"

Frau Brechenmacher looked down at her beer and blew a little hole in the
froth.

"That's not how a wedding should be," she said; "it's not religion to
love two men."

"Nice time she'll have with this one," Frau Rupp exclaimed. "He was
lodging with me last summer and I had to get rid of him. He never
changed his clothes once in two months, and when I spoke to him of the
smell in his room he told me he was sure it floated up from the shop.
Ah, every wife has her cross. Isn't that true, my dear?"

Frau Brechenmacher saw her husband among his colleagues at the next
table. He was drinking far too much, she knew--gesticulating wildly, the
saliva spluttering out of his mouth as he talked.

"Yes," she assented, "that's true. Girls have a lot to learn."

Wedged in between these two fat old women, the Frau had no hope of
being asked to dance. She watched the couples going round and round; she
forgot her five babies and her man and felt almost like a girl again.
The music sounded sad and sweet. Her roughened hands clasped and
unclasped themselves in the folds of her skirt