I do not know what we talked about, but I can still remember that the old dame, who spoke the purest Low German, sometimes made brief, droll remarks, which greatly amused all three of us. She had asked Fraeulein Luise to tell her about Berlin, where, though nearly seventy, she had never been. But the Canoness did not relate all the marvels as if she were talking to a child, but as though she expected from Mother Lieschen's wisdom a decisive verdict upon people and things. I rarely mingled in the conversation between the two friends, but gazed intently at the Canoness's beautiful bowed face and amber hair, and then at the slender fingers that used the needle and thread so nimbly. Sometimes the goat bleated, and the kitten arched her soft back to rub it against my hand. At last the difficult task was finished, and Fraeulein Luise rose, pressed the old dame's shriveled fingers, pushed back from her face a few gray hairs that had fallen over her eyes, and prepared to return home. I asked if I might accompany her, and she silently nodded assent. Yet at first we said nothing. I cast stolen side-glances at her. She wore a dark summer dress, very simple in style, which, like all her clothes--as I knew through friend Liborius--she had made herself. But it fitted her so well. Her figure, which afterward became somewhat too stout, was then in its most perfect symmetry. At last I said, "You are becoming a deaconess, Fraeulein, after all. At least, I am constantly meeting you engaged in some work of charity." She looked calmly at me. "I hope you don't say that in mockery, because you do not believe in works, and think salvation is gained only by faith. But I have never understood that. Whoever regards neighborly love as not merely a command, but a necessity of the heart, can be happy on earth only when he helps his fellow-man wherever he can. And do you really believe any one can be happy in heaven who was not so on earth?" I now launched into a long discourse upon salvation by faith, till I perceived that she was listening absently. Suddenly she interrupted me. "No, I would not do for a deaconess. If I were to wear a special uniform of Christian charity, I should begin to be ashamed of what is best and dearest within me. A thing that is a matter of course ought not to be made a profession whose sign we wear. Others, I know, think differently. But neither could I put on the pastor's robe, if I were a man. Yet perhaps it is necessary; people cling to appearances, and clothes make people." She said all this interruptedly, stooping frequently to gather flowers--which she arranged in a bouquet--from the meadows through which we were walking. Somewhat embarrassed to defend my position, I tried to help myself with a jest. "I would give much if I could see you stand in the pulpit in a black robe and bands, and hear you preach. But tell me, if you had been a man, what profession would you have chosen?"