inced with my own hand the
pork for his sausages before they had mincing-machines in
Schleswig-Holstein. I have seen personally to the smoking of his hams
and fish. I make his Apfelkuchen and Nusskuchen myself, and do not buy
them in the shop, like that lazy Hausfrau opposite us at No 2, who
comes from that God-forgotten country England, where all the women are
so badly brought up. I grant you that what I do is no more than the
duty of every God-fearing German _Haushaelterin_; none the less, I do
not mean all my work to go for nothing, and I will not be ousted by a
hussy! In the time of the _vielbedauerten_ mother (Frau Regierungsrat
Lenbach) I had no worries about his matrimonial affairs; she looked
after those. But _sieh mal_, Frau Riedel, now the care of him is on my
shoulders. He has no more idea of taking care of himself than a baby!
He is exactly like that learned man--I think it was our great
Neander--who was running out of his college one day and ran into a
cow; so he pulled off his hat and said, '_Gnaedige Frau, ich bitte um
Verzeihung_' ('Gracious lady, I beg your pardon'), and went on; and
the week after he came tearing round the same corner, thinking, I
suppose, of those heathen gods and goddesses whose pictures shame a
modest woman to look at, and he ran up against a lady, so he cried
out: '_Oh! du dumme Kuh! warum kommst du mir immer in den Weg?_' ('Oh,
you stupid cow, why will you always get in my way?') Yes, my Herr
Professor is just like that--quite as stupid, though they call him so
wise and clever; and what chance has a born innocent like he is
against a designing spinster of forty-five who makes him presents of
_Weihnachtstollen_ at Christmas, _Oster-Eier_ at Easter, and
_Geburtstagstorte_ on his birthday? I ask you what chance of escape a
poor _Junggeselle_ has?

"Told him she wanted to marry him! Not I. Why, _liebe Frau_, I have
not lived sixty-five and a half years in this world for nothing! If I
let him suppose she was in love with him, that would be the very way
to make him like her. So as I laid the cloth for the Herr Professor's
_Abendtisch_, I remarked casually that Fraeulein Bettine Meyer was not
at all a bad sort of woman really, and that she had some excellent
qualities, if only she did not make herself so ridiculous. 'How
ridiculous?' says he, sitting up. 'What does she do ridiculous, I
should like to know?' 'Why, wears a false front and curls bought at
Frau Koelsch's shop,' says I. 'Poo