risen higher and higher after the hot bath, the
pulse and the poor heart had rushed along at a mad pace, until the ice
from the lake had at last, at last brought coolness, and he had fallen
into a sound sleep, which, when the sky commenced to glow in the east
and a new day had looked in through the window, had turned into a
beneficial, miraculous perspiration.

So she had to let the boy run about.

But that he hung on Cilia's arm when she had to go an errand in the
evening, that he hurried after her when she only took a letter to the
box, or that he brought her a chair when she wanted to sit with her
mending-basket under the elderberry bush near the kitchen door was not
to be tolerated. When Kate heard that Cilia had not gone further than
the nearest pines on the edge of the wood when it was her Sunday out,
and had sat there for hours with the boy on the grass, there was a
scene.

Cilia wept bitter tears. What had she done? She had only told
Woelfchen about her home.

"What's your home to him? He is to mind his own business and
you yours." Kate was about to say still more, to cry out: "Leave
off telling him your private concerns, I won't have it," but she
controlled herself, although with difficulty. She could have boxed this
round-cheeked girl's ears, as she looked at her so boldly with her
bright eyes. Even Frida Laemke was preferable to her.

But Frida did not show herself very often now. She already wore a
dress that reached to her ankles, attended a sewing class out of
school-hours, and after her confirmation, which was to be a year next
Easter she was to go "to business," as she said very importantly.

"I shall give her notice," said Kate one evening, when Cilia had
cleared the table and she was sitting quite alone with her husband.

"Oh!" He had not really been listening. "Why?"

"Because of her behaviour." The woman's voice vibrated with
suppressed indignation more than that, with passionate excitement. Her
eyes, which were generally golden brown and gentle, became dark and
sombre.

"Why, you're actually trembling! What is the matter now?" He laid
the paper he was about to read aside, quite depressed. There was some
trouble with the boy again; nothing else excited her in that
manner.

"I can't have it any longer." Her voice was hard, had lost its
charm. "And I won't stand it. Just think, when I came home to-day I was
away an hour towards evening, hardly an hour good gracious, you cannot
always be s