penly, but all the same engaged."

"It is truly scandalous!" cried his wife, greatly excited, and firmly
believing that the verses were indeed Anna's. Was she not herself of the
race of _Weiber_, and did she not therefore well know what they were
capable of?

"Silence, Frau!" commanded Dellwig.

"And she takes my flowers--my daily offerings, floral and poetical, and
she sends me these verses--and all the time she is betrothed to someone
else?"

"She is," said Dellwig with another burst of laughter, for Klutz's face
amused him intensely. He got up and slapped him on the shoulder. "This
is your first experience of _Weiber_, eh? Don't waste your heartaches
over her. She is a young lady who likes to have her little joke and
means no harm----"

"She is a person without shame!" cried his wife.

"Silence, Frau!" snapped Dellwig. "Look here, young man--why, what does
he look like, sitting there with all the wind knocked out of him? Get
him a glass of brandy, Frau, or we shall have him crying again. Sit up,
and be a man. Miss Estcourt is not for you, and never will be. Only a
vicar could ever have dreamed she was, and have been imposed upon by
this poetry stuff. But though you're a vicar you're a man, eh? Here,
drink this, and tell us if you are not a man."

Klutz feebly tried to push the glass away, but Dellwig insisted. Klutz
was pale to ghastliness, and his eyes were brimming again with tears.

"Oh, this person! Oh, this Englishwoman! Oh, the shameful treatment of
an estimable young man!" cried Frau Dellwig, staring at the havoc Anna
had wrought.

"Silence, Frau!" shouted Dellwig, stamping his foot. "You can't be
treated like this," he went on to Klutz, who, used to drinking much milk
at the abstemious parsonage, already felt the brandy running along his
veins like liquid fire, "you can't be made ridiculous and do nothing. A
vicar can't fight, but you must have some revenge."

Klutz started. "Revenge! Yes, but what revenge?" he asked.

"Nothing to do with Miss Estcourt, of course. Leave her alone----"

"Leave her alone?" cried his wife, "what, when she it is----"

"Silence, Frau!" roared Dellwig. "Leave her alone, I say. You won't gain
anything there, young man. But go to her _Braeutigam_ Lohm and tell him
about it, and show him the stuff. He'll be interested."

Dellwig laughed boisterously, and took two or three rapid turns up and
down the room. He had not lived with old Joachim and seen much of old
Lohm and