se would make as good a father as you are to that dear
child. What kind of a way is that to do--to come home drunk at two
o'clock in the morning, without a thought for the poor little thing
that's waiting for you half asleep to help you to bed, you old rascal?
And at that hour of the morning you make the good little thing get you
a cup of coffee; and you take it like a thankless fool. Pooh, captain,
I don't expect any man to be a pattern of morality and temperance. But
even for a man there are _some_ limits--and those limits you overstep,
my good sir!"

On this particular day Frau Kummerfelden was more than usually put out
with her old friend on account of something that had just come to her
ears. But none the less she poured him out his third cup of strong
coffee, and waited on him just as attentively as if he had been Saint
Nicholas himself.

"And another thing," she said--"do you suppose the good child ever
talks of the way you go on? Not a syllable! People might tear her in
little pieces and they wouldn't get a word out of her that wasn't to
your credit."

"A soldier's child--damn it all!" cried the captain, bringing down his
fist on the table. "She gets that from me, the little rogue!"

Frau Kummerfelden put up both her busy hands to her big cap, as if to
protect it from hearing impossible things. "Lord save us!" she said.
"There's no use talking to people like you."

When Captain Rauchfuss's daughter had reached her seventeenth year, it
came to pass that the old man got involved in a love-affair. On his
Sunday visits to Frau Kummerfelden about this time he had often found
there a neat little widow who professed a charming devotion to her old
teacher. After her husband's death she had been left in poor
circumstances. She came to consult Frau Kummerfelden very seriously
about a project of settling down in Weimar as a nurse; and she made it
all so touching and edifying that the captain, who happened to be
present at some of these discussions, found his heart growing quite
warm. Moreover, the little woman had a fascinating heart-shaped face,
broad in the brow and pointed at the chin, and a pair of round, merry
brown eyes.

"That'd be the kind of nurse for me," said the captain; "a lively
creature, who'd make the whole business look less bad. It would be
rather fun!"

"Shame on you, old simpleton!" said Frau Kummerfelden crossly.

"Well, but, Kummerfelden," said the captain, "you're a stately old
frigate wit