dame Dort heard her bustling
back up the staircase without. She knew the old nurse's step well; but,
besides hers, she heard the tread of some one else, and then the noisy
bark of a dog. A sort of altercation between two voices followed, in
which the old nurse's angry accents were plainly perceptible; and next
there seemed a hurried scuffle just without the parlour door, which
suddenly burst open with a clatter, and two people entered the room.

They were Lorischen and Burgher Jans, who both tried to speak together,
the result being a confused jangle of tongues from which Madame Dort
could learn nothing.

"I say I was first!" squeaked the Burgher in a high treble key, which he
always adopted when excited beyond his usual placid mode of utterance.

"And I say it was me!" retorted the old nurse in her gruff tones, which
were much more like those of a man. "What right have you to try and
supplant the servant of the house, who specially went out about it, you
little meddlesome teetotum, I'd like to know, hey?"

"But I was first, I say! Madame Dort--"

"Don't listen to him, mistress," interposed Lorischen. "I've just--"

"There's news of--"

But, bang just then came Lorischen's market-basket against the side of
the little man's head, knocking his hat off and stopping his speech
abruptly; while the old nurse muttered savagely, "I wish it had been
your little turnip-top of a head instead of your hat, that I do!"

"Good people! good people!" exclaimed Madame Dort, rising to her feet
and dropping her needlework and Mouser--who rapidly jumped on to the top
of the stove out of the reach of Burgher Jans' terrier, which, of
course, had followed his master into the parlour and at once made a dart
at the cat as he tumbled on to the floor from the widow's lap. "Pray do
not make such a noise, and both speak at once! What is the matter that
you are so eager to tell me--good news, I trust, Lorischen, or you would
not have hurried back so soon?"

Madame Dort's voice trembled with anxiety, and tears of suspense stood
in her eyes.

"There," said Lorischen triumphantly to the Burgher, who remained silent
for the moment from the shock of the old nurse's attack. "You see for
yourself that my mistress wishes me to tell her."

"Oh, what is it--what have you heard?" cried the widow plaintively. "Do
not keep me in this agony any longer!"

And she sat down again nervously in her chair, gazing from one to the
other in mute entr