“If you think she is an invalid you are reckoning without your host.  Invalids live the longest.  Besides she has the black chicken.  Beware of it.  It knows everything and tattles everything.  I don’t know, it makes me shudder.  And I’ll wager all that business upstairs has some connection with this chicken.”

“Oh, I don’t believe it.  But it is terrible just the same, and Kruse, who always sides himself against his wife, cannot talk me out of it.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it was nothing but mice.”

“Well, mice are quite bad enough.  I can’t bear mice.  But, to change the subject, I saw you chatting with Kruse, plainly, also your familiar actions, and in fact I think you were going to paint a moustache on his lip.  That I call pretty far advanced.  A little later you will be jilted.  You are still a smug person and have your charms.  But beware, that is all I have to say to you.  Just what was your experience the first time?  Was it such that you can tell me about it?”

“Oh, I can tell you.  But it was terrible.  And because it was so terrible, your Ladyship’s mind can be perfectly easy with regard to Kruse.  A girl who has gone through what I did has enough of it and takes care.  I still dream of it occasionally and then I am all knocked to pieces the next day.  Such awful fright.”

Effi sat up and leaned her head on her arm.  “Tell me about it, and how it came about.  I know from my observations at home that it is always the same story with you girls.”

“Yes, no doubt it is always the same at first, and I am determined not to think that there was anything special about my case.  But when the time came that they threw it into my face and I was suddenly forced to say:  ‘yes, it is so,’ oh, that was terrible.  Mother—­well, I could get along with her, but father, who had the village blacksmith’s shop, he was severe and quick to fly into a rage.  When he heard it, he came at me with a pair of tongs which he had just taken from the fire and was going to kill me.  I screamed and ran up to the attic and hid myself and there I lay and trembled, and did not come down till they called me and told me to come.  Besides, I had a younger sister, who always pointed at me and said:  ‘Ugh!’ Then when the child was about to come I went into a barn near by, because I was afraid to stay in the house.  There strangers found me half dead and carried me into the house and laid me in my bed.  The third day they took the child away and when I asked where it was they said it was well taken care of.  Oh, your Ladyship, may the holy mother of God protect you from such distress!”

Effi was startled and stared at Roswitha with wide-opened eyes.  But she was more frightened than vexed.  “The things you do say!  Why, I am a married woman.  You must not say such things; it is improper, it is not fitting.”

“Oh, your Ladyship.”

“Tell me rather what became of you.  They had robbed you of your baby.  You told me that.”