"Eh, what? Noble?" said the captain. "Deuce take it--beauty's the thing in a woman. There you are!" "You old fool!" said Frau Kummerfelden. "What was it kept your property in such fine condition? Was it your wife's beauty, or her ability?" "Ah, bah! Of course non-essentials have their use too. But the main thing ... Look--she might have gone down on her knees to me, and I'd never have married Frau Rauchfuss if she hadn't been such a fetching little thing." "The Lord have mercy on you men!" said Frau Kummerfelden, stirring the sugar in her coffee. "You choose one that takes your fancy, and you call her beautiful as long as you care for her. What sort of a life did your wife have up there, lonely and deserted, as if she'd married a log of wood?" "I say, Kummerfelden! Thunder--you're saying a good deal!" "Because it's the truth!" said Frau Kummerfelden crossly. "And a rocking-horse would make as good a father as you are to that dear child. What kind of a way is that to do--to come home drunk at two o'clock in the morning, without a thought for the poor little thing that's waiting for you half asleep to help you to bed, you old rascal? And at that hour of the morning you make the good little thing get you a cup of coffee; and you take it like a thankless fool. Pooh, captain, I don't expect any man to be a pattern of morality and temperance. But even for a man there are _some_ limits--and those limits you overstep, my good sir!" On this particular day Frau Kummerfelden was more than usually put out with her old friend on account of something that had just come to her ears. But none the less she poured him out his third cup of strong coffee, and waited on him just as attentively as if he had been Saint Nicholas himself. "And another thing," she said--"do you suppose the good child ever talks of the way you go on? Not a syllable! People might tear her in little pieces and they wouldn't get a word out of her that wasn't to your credit." "A soldier's child--damn it all!" cried the captain, bringing down his fist on the table. "She gets that from me, the little rogue!" Frau Kummerfelden put up both her busy hands to her big cap, as if to protect it from hearing impossible things. "Lord save us!" she said. "There's no use talking to people like you."