WENDLA.

What do you want to ask me, Melchior?

MELCHIOR.

I've heard, Wendla, that you visit poor people's houses. You take them food and clothes and money also. Do you do that of your own free will, or does your mother send you?

WENDLA.

Mother sends me mostly. They are families of day laborers that have too many children. Often the husband can't find work and then they freeze and go hungry. We have a lot of things which were laid away long ago in our closets and wardrobes and which are no longer needed.----But how did you know it?

MELCHIOR.

Do you go willingly or unwillingly, when your mother sends you?

WENDLA.

Oh, I love to go!----How can you ask?

MELCHIOR.

But the children are dirty, the women are sick, the houses are full of filth, the men hate you because you don't work----

WENDLA.

That's not true, Melchior. And if it were true, I'd go just the same!

MELCHIOR.

Why just the same, Wendla?

WENDLA.

I'd go just the same! It would make me all the happier to be able to help them.

MELCHIOR.

Then you go to see the poor because it makes you happy?

WENDLA.

I go to them because they are poor.

MELCHIOR.

But if it weren't a pleasure to you, you wouldn't go?

WENDLA.

Can I help it that it makes me happy?

MELCHIOR.

And because of it you expect to go to heaven! So it's true, then, that which has given me no peace for a month past!--Can the covetous man help it that it is no pleasure to him to go to see dirty sick children?

WENDLA.

Oh, surely it would give you the greatest pleasure!

MELCHIOR.

And, therefore, he must suffer everlasting death. I'll write a paper on it and send it to Pastor Kahlbauch. He is the cause of it. Why did he fool us with the joy of good works.--If he can't answer me I won't go to Sunday-school any longer and won't let them confirm me.

WENDLA.

Why don't you tell your trouble to your dear parents? Let yourself be confirmed, it won't cost you your head. If it weren't for our horrid white dresses and your long trousers one might be more spiritual.

MELCHIOR.

There is no sacrifice! There is no self-denial! I see the good rejoice in their hearts, I see the evil tremble and groan--I see you, Wendla Bergmann, shake your locks and laugh while I am as melancholy as an outlaw.--What did you dream, Wendla, when you lay in the gra.s.s by the brook?

WENDLA.

----Foolishness----nonsense.----

MELCHIOR.

With your eyes open?

WENDLA.

I dreamed I was a poor, poor beggar girl, who was turned out in the street at five o'clock in the morning. I had to beg the whole long day in storm and bad weather from rough, hard-hearted people. When I came home at night, shivering from hunger and cold, and without as much money as my father coveted, then I was beaten----beaten----

MELCHIOR.

I know that, Wendla. You have the silly children's stories to thank for that. Believe me, such brutal men exist no longer.

WENDLA.

Oh yes, Melchior, you're mistaken. Martha Bessel is beaten night after night, so that one sees the marks of it the next day. Oh, but it must hurt! It makes one boiling hot when she tells it. I'm so frightfully sorry for her that I often cry over it in my pillows at night. For months I've been thinking how one can help her.----I'd take her place for eight days with pleasure.

MELCHIOR.

One should complain of her father at once. Then the child would be taken away from him.

WENDLA.

I, Melchior, have never been beaten in my life----not a single time.