"And washes and irons to that extent that our whole house smells of nothing but soap and flat-irons." Klaus showed his teeth; I pressed his hand in token of sympathy with his happiness, though I had never been especially ravished by the perfumes he so highly prized; but now more urgently than ever I desired to know how this happy young pair ever made up their minds so cruelly to risk their good fortune. "I told you already," answered Klaus, "that we never were quite happy. Wherever we went or stood, and above all when we were in real good humor about anything, the thought always came up: if he could only be here! And four weeks ago yesterday, when we had some _Bierkaltschale_[7]--no, no, we could stand it no longer." "Some _Bierkaltschale_?" I asked, in some surprise. "Yes; don't you know how you always used to have some made for you at the forge, in the summer-time, when you wanted to give yourself a treat? Christel often made it for you. Well, then, just four weeks ago we were drinking some--they have an excellent beer for it in Berlin, much better than ours, that was always a little bitter--and I was enjoying it, when Christel on a sudden let the ladle fall and began to howl, and I knew at once what she was thinking of, and then I began, and we kept on drinking and howling, and when we had finished, we both said together: It can't go on this way! So then we put our heads together----" "As you did that evening when I met you on the heath?" "And contrived a plan at last," continued Klaus, who would have turned red at my indiscreet remark, had the color of his complexion allowed it, "that is to say, Christel contrived it. She had read just such a story, only the prisoner was a king's son, and his deliverer was a knight, who disguised himself as a priest--of course that wouldn't do, but a sailor would do, Christel said, for here in the workhouse there was sure to be many a tarpaulin, and of course there would be some coming to see them. And anyhow, Christel said, a sailor's dress was the best disguise in a sea-port. So we practised the whole thing----" "You practised it?" "To be sure; it wasn't so easy; we went through it every night for a week when I came home from work, until Christel said at last she thought it would do at a pinch." "It went capitally, Klaus!" "Yes, but what good has it done?" asked Klaus, with a regretful look at the bed under which the disguise was lying, "when I had my ears bored to put these rings in? and when Christel every morning rubbed my face with bacon----" "With bacon?" "I must look like a sailor from the other side, Christel said, and for that there is nothing so good as to rub your face with bacon and then scorch it at a furnace." "You look like a mulatto, Klaus." "So Christel said; but what good would it do if I looked like a negro, when you won't come out?"