Very well, then. Come along. That would be the last straw if one had to be prepared for such desperate follies from you, Mr. Spitta, or from this child! At your age one should have courage. If everything doesn't go quite smoothly you have no right to think of expedients by which one has nothing to gain and everything to lose. We live but once, after all. SPITTA Oh, I have courage! And I'm not thinking of putting an end to myself as one who is weary and defeated ... unless Walburga is refused to me. In that case, to be sure, my determination is firm. It doesn't in the least undermine my belief in myself or in my future that I am poor for the present and have to take my dinner occasionally in the people's kitchen. And I am sure Walburga is equally convinced that a day must come that will indemnify us for all the dark and difficult hours of the present. MRS. HASSENREUTER Life is long; and you're almost children to-day. It's not so very bad for a student to have to take an occasional meal in the people's kitchen. It would be much worse, however, for Walburga as a married woman. And I hope for the sake of you both that you'll wait till something in the nature of a hearthstone of your own with the necessary wood and coal can be founded. In the meantime I've succeeded in persuading papa to a kind of truce. It wasn't easy and it might have been impossible had not this morning's mail brought the news of his definitive appointment as manager of the theatre at Strassburg. WALBURGA [_Joyously._] Oh, mama, mama! That is a ray of sunshine, isn't it? MRS. JOHN [_Sits up with a start._] Bruno! MRS. HASSENREUTER [_Apologising._] Oh, we've wakened you, Mrs. John. MRS. JOHN Is Bruno gone? MRS. HASSENREUTER Who? Who's Bruno? MRS. JOHN Why, Bruno! Don' you know Bruno? MRS. HASSENREUTER Ah, yes, yes! That's the name of your brother. MRS. JOHN Was I asleep? SPITTA Fast asleep. But you cried out aloud in your sleep just now. MRS. JOHN Did you see, Mr. Spitta, how them boys out in the yard threw stones at my little Adelbert's wee grave? But I got after 'em, eh? An' they wasn't no bad slaps neither what I dealt out. MRS. HASSENREUTER It seems that you've been dreaming of your first little boy who died, Mrs. John. MRS. JOHN No, no; all that's fac'! I ain't been dreamin'. An' then I took little Adelbert an' I went with him to the registrar's office. MRS. HASSENREUTER But if your little boy's no longer alive ... how could you ... MRS. JOHN Aw, when a little child is onct born, it don't matter if it's dead ... it's still right inside o' its mother. Did you hear that dawg howlin' behind the board fence? An' the moon had a big ring aroun' it! Bruno, you ain' doin' right! MRS. HASSENREUTER [_Shaking MRS. JOHN._] Wake up, my good woman! Wake up, Mrs. John! You are ill! Your husband ought to take you to see a physician. MRS. JOHN Bruno, you ain' doin' right! [_The bells are ringing again._] Ain't them the bells? MRS. HASSENREUTER