“I hope you are not going on one of the unfortunate apple-expeditions I hear so much about,” she added.

Kurt quite indignantly assured her that he would never do such a thing.  Lippo was pushing him to one side now.  The little boy had made attempts to reach his mother for several minutes, and he was delighted at his brother’s quick departure.

“Mr. Rector sends you his regards and he wants to know if you wanted to give him an answer.  Here is a letter,” said Lippo.

“Where did you bring the letter from?” asked the mother.

“I didn’t bring the letter.  Lise from the rectory brought it,” was Lippo’s information.  “But Lise saw me in front of the door and said that I should take the letter up with me and give it to you, and tell her whether you wanted to give the Rector an answer or not.”

“Oh, that is just the way a message ought to be given,” the mother said with a smile.  “Did you hear it, Maezli?  I wish you could learn from Lippo how to do it.  Whenever you have one to give, I have such trouble to find out what really happened and what you have only imagined.”

Maezli, whose knitting-ball was at that moment in the most hopelessly knotted condition, was ever so glad when her mother suggested a new activity.  Quickly flinging her knitting away, she jumped up from her stool.  Then she began to repeat Lippo’s speech, word for word:  “I did not bring the letter.  Lise from the rectory—­”

“No, no, Maezli, I do not mean it that way,” the mother interrupted her.  “I mean that the reports you bring me so often sound quite impossible.  I want you to be as careful and exact in them as Lippo.”

In the meantime the mother had opened the letter and looked suddenly quite frightened.

“Tell the girl that I shall go to Mr. Rector myself and that she need not wait for an answer,” was her message entrusted to Lippo.

The thing she had dreaded so much was settled now.  The Rector let her know in his letter that he had realized the time had come for his pupils to be put into different hands.  He wrote that he had decided to discontinue the studies with them next fall, but that he would be only too glad to be of assistance to Mrs. Maxa in consulting about Bruno’s further education.  He closed with an assurance that he would be the happier to do so because Bruno had always been very dear to him.

Mrs. Maxa, sitting silently with folded hands, was lost in thought.  This was something that happened very seldom.

But Mea stood before her and trying to get her sympathy with passionate gestures.  “Just think, mother,” she cried out, “Elvira is so angry now that she will never have anything more to do with me, no never.  But she was most offended because I told her that it was wrong of her; not to admit that she had chattered in school.  She said quite sarcastically that if I chose to correct her on account of that raggedy Loneli, I should keep Loneli for a friend and not her.”