children always know the last piece of news that is going; not that Mrs. Behrens was curious, she only liked to know what was going on, and since she had come to live in a country-town she had been infected with the desire, all inhabitants of such towns feel, to know what their neighbours are doing. She once said to Louisa: "you see, my dear, one likes to hear what's going on around one, but still when my sister Mrs. Triddelfitz begins to tell me any news I don't like it, her judgments of people's actions are so sharp and sarcastic; it's quite different with little Anna, she tells such funny innocent stories that one can laugh over them quite happily; she is a dear good child." This new friendship gained strength and significance when the bad harvest brought its consequences of famine, want and misery into the town. Anna's father was a doctor, although he had not the title of Practising Physician, but he had something that was better than any such title, he had a kind heart, and when he came home and told of the poverty and wretchedness he had seen, Anna used to go to Mrs. Behrens and Louisa and repeat to them what her father had said. Mrs. Behrens used then to go to her larder and fill a basket with food and wine, which the two girls carried out to the homes of the starving people in the dusk of the evening, and when they came home they gave each other a kiss, and then they kissed Mrs. Behrens and Hawermann, that was all, not a word was said about it. When arrangements were to be made about the soup kitchens, all the ladies in Rahnstädt held a great 'talkee-talkee,' as Bräsig called it, to settle how the distress in the town could best be alleviated. The town-clerk's wife said that if there were to be soup-kitchens at all, "they must be on a _grand_ scale." And when she was asked what she meant, she answered that it was all the same to her, but if any good was to be done it must be on "a grand scale." Then the elder members of the council agreed that a difference must be made between the converted and unconverted poor, for a little starvation would do the latter no harm. After that a young and newly married woman proposed that some man should be appointed manager of the charity, but her motion was quashed at once, as all the other ladies voted against her, and the town-clerk's wife remarked that as long as she had lived--"and that's a good many years now," interrupted Mrs. Krummhorn--all cooking and charitable societies had been managed by women, for men didn't understand such things, but she would once more impress upon them that the charity must be done on a grand scale. The Conventicle then separated, every member as wise as she had been at the beginning. When the soup kitchens were opened, two pretty girls of our acquaintance became active workers in them. They flitted about the great fire in their neat gowns and long white linen aprons, and ladled out the soup from the large pots into the tins the poor women brought with them.