Frau Laemke felt much flattered at his visit. But she had not made much of the doll; she had taken it from Frida at once and locked it into the cupboard: "So that you don't smash it at once. Besides, your father isn't a gentleman that you can play with dolls every day." But later on when her husband came down from the lodge, in which he sat in his leisure hours mending boots and shoes, to drink a cup of coffee and eat a bun on Frida's birthday, the doll was fetched out again and shown him. "Fine, isn't it? She's got it from Wolfgang's mamma. Just look, Laemke"--the woman lifted the doll's pink dress up and showed the white petticoat trimmed with a frill edged with narrow lace--"such trimming. Just like that I sewed round the dress Frida wore at her christening. She was the first one; bless you, and you think at the time it's something wonderful. Oh dear!"--she sighed and laid the doll back in the cupboard in which the clean pillowcases and Frida's and her Sunday hats were together with all kinds of odds and ends--"how time flies. Now she's already nine." "Ten," corrected Frida. "I'm ten to-day, mother." "Right--dear me, are you already ten?" The woman laughed and shook her head, surprised at her own forgetfulness. And then she nodded to her husband: "Do you still remember, Laemke, when she was born?" "If I remember!" he said, pouring another cup out of the inexhaustible coffee-pot. "Those were nice carryings-on when she was born--none of that again, thanks. The girl gave you a lot of trouble. And me too; I was terribly afraid. But that's ten years since, old woman--why, it's almost forgotten." "And if it had happened a hundred years ago I shouldn't have forgotten it, oh no." The woman put out her hand as though to ward off something. "I was just going to make myself some coffee about four o'clock in the afternoon, like to-day, I had got such a longing for it, and then it started. I just got as far as the passage--do you remember, you were still working in Stiller's workshop at the time, and we lived in the Alte Jakob, fifth storey to the left?--and I knocked at Fritze's, the necktie maker's, whose door was opposite ours, and said: 'Oh, please,' I said, 'send your little one as quickly as you can to Frau Wadlern, 10, Spittelmarkt, she knows all about it'--oh dear, how bad I felt. And I fell down on the nearest chair; they had the greatest difficulty to get me home again. And now it began, I could not control myself however much I tried; I believe they heard me scream three houses off. And it lasted, it lasted--evening came on--you came home--it was midnight--five, six, seven in the morning--then at last at nine o'clock Frau Wadlern said: 'The child, it'll soon be----'" "That's enough now, mother," interrupted the man, glancing sideways at the children, who were sitting very quietly round the table listening, with wide-open, inquisitive eyes. "All that's over long ago, the girl's here, and has been a credit to you so far."