ant to the chief cook.

When Frau Vorkler had come to see her children, she had scarcely been
able to find words which sufficiently expressed her grateful
appreciation, but to-day she seemed like a different person.

The brief colloquy between the abbess and Eva already appeared to her too
long, and when the former bade her finish her business later with Els and
old Martsche, she angrily declared that, with all due reverence for the
Lady Abbess, she must inform Jungfrau Eva also what compelled her, a
virtuous woman with a grateful heart, to take her children from the
service of the employer for whom her husband had sacrificed his life.

Els, who was eager to conceal the woman's insulting errand from Eva,
tried to silence Frau Vorkler, but she defiantly persisted, and with
redoubled zeal protested that speak she must or her heart would break.
Then she declared that she had been proud to place her children in so
godly a household, but now everything was changed, and though it grieved
her to the soul, she must insist upon taking Metz and Ortel from its
service. She lived by the piety of people who bought candles for the dear
saints and rosaries for praying; but even the most devout had eyes
everywhere, and if it were known that her young children were serving in
a house where such things happened, as alas! were reported through the
whole city concerning the daughters of this family----

Here old Martsche with honest indignation interrupted the excited woman;
but Fran Vorkler would not be silenced, and asked what a poor girl like
her Metz possessed except her good name. How quickly suspicion would rest
on a lass whose respectability was questioned! People had begun to do so
ever since the Ortlieb sisters were called the "beautiful" instead of the
pious and virtuous Es. This showed how such notice of the face and figure
benefited Christian maidens. Yesterday and to-day she had given a
three-farthing candle to her saint as a thank offering that this horror
had not reached their mother's ears. The dead woman had been a truly
devout and noble lady, and her soul would be grateful to her for
impressing upon the minds of her motherless daughters that the path which
they had recklessly entered----

This was too much for Ortel, who, concealed behind a heap of sacks, had
listened to the discussion, and clasping his hands beseechingly, he now
went up to his mother and entreated her to beware of repeating the
slanders of evil-minde