"Louise is discreet," she said, "she took charge of everything for me, this morning." They went together through the new house, and the little Frau Pastorin thanked him, and kissed him, for his friendship, that he had arranged everything just as it was in Gurlitz, and she looked out of the window, and said, "Everything, everything, but no grave!" They stood for a long time at the window, then Habermann pressed her hand, and said, "Frau Pastorin, I have a favor to ask, I have given notice to Herr von Rambow, and shall leave next Christmas; can you spare me the little gable room, and will you take me at your table?" At a less agitated moment, she would have had much to ask, and much to say; but now she said merely. "Where Louise and I live, you are always the nearest." Yes, so it is in the world, what is one's joy is another's sorrow, and weddings and graves lie close together, and yet the distance between them is wider than between summer heat and winter cold; but there is a wonderful kind of people in the world,--if one seeks one can find them,--who can throw a kind of wonderful, heaven-climbing bridges, from one heart to another, over the gulfs which the world has torn open, and such a bridge was built between the little, round Pastors' wives, Lining of Rexow, and Frau Pastorin of Rahnstadt; and when the key stone was dropped into place, exactly over the parsonage at Gurlitz, they fell into each other's arms, and held so fast together that to their life's end they were never parted. And our old Gottlieb! He did his share, he brought stones and mortar,--he had but a brief experience in the pastoral office; but I must say that, when he preached his entrance sermon, he thought less of himself than of his faithful predecessor, the old Pastor Behrens.