Hawermann did not manage to get old Moses over Mrs. Behrens' threshold noiselessly as he had hoped, for Moses tripped and nearly fell as he was going in. Naturally Mrs. Behrens heard the noise as distinctly as the others did.--"Ah!" she exclaimed, hastening to the door, "there's Hawermann come back with poor Mina," but when she put out her head expecting to see Mina's face, a little swollen it is true, she saw Moses in a flowing dressing gown, and fur-boots, and with his wrinkled old face and large black eyes turned full on her: "Good evening, Mrs. Behrens," he said.--Little Mrs. Behrens was so startled that she drew back, exclaiming: "Preserve us all! Hawermann is trying all sorts of magic and heathen incantations to-night, and now he has brought an old Jew into the house at midnight; what can Moses do to cure Mina's toothache?"--Mrs. Nüssler felt as if she were in her own kitchen at home frying fish, and had just got a fine large pike in the frying pan, when it caught her by the thumb and pressed its teeth gradually deeper and deeper into her flesh, so that she could not move for fear of losing her whole thumb. What business had Mrs. Nüssler to tell such a fib, and a fib that might be disproved at any moment.--"Why, Mrs. Behrens," said Bräsig, "it can only have been Moses' double that you saw, it can't have been himself, for when I went to see him the day before yesterday he told me that he couldn't walk in the streets any more."--"Oh," interrupted Louisa, "my father must have something very important to say to the old man, and my aunt knows all about it, and has only been trying to put us off with a story about Mina. It would be very unlike my father to play foolish tricks at this time of night."--The pike forced its teeth deeper into Mrs. Nüssler's flesh, but she shut her mouth tight and kept her own counsel a little longer: "Ah see!" she said. "You're frightfully clever, Louie! Clever children are a blessing to their parents; but," she could bear it no more, and pulling her thumb out of the pike's mouth, she went on, "I wish with all my heart that you were stupider. I'll tell you the truth, Mina isn't here at all, it's Mrs. von Rambow of Pümpelhagen who has something to arrange with Charles and Moses."--Little Mrs. Behrens was very angry when she heard this, partly because she had been kept in ignorance of the truth although it was her own house, and so she was most assuredly the nearest, and ought to have been told; and partly because it showed her how horribly and heathenishly her good old friend and neighbour, Mrs. Nüssler, could lie: "You told us such a circumstantial lie," she said.--"Yes, Mrs. Behrens," answered Mrs. Nüssler, trying to look as if she had done nothing wrong, "I did."--"Mrs. Nüssler," remonstrated her friend, looking as if the little black cloak of the late parson Behrens had fallen on her shoulders, "lying is an abominable unchristian sin."--"I know that," answered Mrs. Nüssler, "and I never lie for myself.