HOFFMANN

Ah, there is mama! Permit me to introduce to you my friend Dr. Loth.

MRS. KRAUSE

[_Half-curtsies, peasant-fashion._] I take the liberty! [_After a brief pause._] Eh, but Doctor, you mustn't bear me a grudge, no, you mustn't at all. I've got to excuse myself before you right away--[_she speaks with increasing fluency_]--excuse myself on account o' the way I acted a while ago. You know, y'understan', we' get a powerful lot o' tramps here right along ... 'Tain't reasonable to believe the trouble we has with them beggars. And they steals exackly like magpies. It ain't as we're stingy.

We don't have to be thinkin' and thinkin' before we spends a penny, no, nor before we spends a pound neither. Now, old Louis Krause's wife, she's a close one, worst kind you see, she wouldn't give a crittur that much!

Her old man died o' rage because he lost a dirty little two-thousand, playin' cards. No, we ain't that kind. You see that sideboard over there.

That cost me two hundred crowns, not countin' the freight even. Baron Klinkow hisself couldn't have nothin' better.

_MRS. SPILLER has entered shortly after MRS. KRAUSE. She is small, slightly deformed and gotten up in her mistress's cast-off garments.

While MRS. KRAUSE is speaking she looks up at her with a certain devout attention. She is about fifty-five years old. Every time she exhales her breath she utters a gentle moan, which is regularly audible, even when she speaks, as a soft_--m.

MRS. SPILLER

[_In a servile, affectedly melancholy, minor tone. Very softly._] His lordship has exactly the identical sideboard--m--.

HELEN

[_To MRS. KRAUSE._] Mama, don't you think we had better sit down first and then--

MRS. KRAUSE

[_Turns with lightning-like rapidity to HELEN and transfixes her with a withering look; harshly and masterfully._] Is that proper?

[_She is about to sit down but remembers that grace has not been said. Mechanically she folds her hands without, however, mastering her malignity._

MRS. SPILLER

Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest. May thy gifts to us be blest.

[_All take their seats noisily. The embarra.s.sing situation is tided over by the pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing of dishes, which takes some time._

HOFFMANN

[_To LOTH._] Help yourself, old fellow, won't you? Oysters?

LOTH

I'll try them. They're the first I've ever eaten.

MRS. KRAUSE

[_Has just sucked down an oyster noisily._] This season, you mean.

LOTH

No, I mean at all.

[_MRS. KRAUSE and MRS. SPILLER exchange a look._

HOFFMANN

[_To KAHL, who is squeezing a lemon with his teeth._] Haven't seen you for two days, Mr. Kahl. Have you been busy shooting mice?

KAHL

N-naw ...

HOFFMANN

[_To LOTH._] Mr. Kahl, I must tell you, is pa.s.sionately fond of hunting.

KAHL

M-m-mice is i-infamous amphibies.

HELEN

[_Bursts out._] It's too silly. He can't see anything wild or tame without killing it.

KAHL

Las' night I sh-shot our ol' s-sow.

LOTH

Then I suppose that shooting is your chief occupation.

MRS. KRAUSE

Mr. Kahl, he just does that fer his own private pleasure.

MRS. SPILLER

Forest, game and women--as his Excellency the Minister von Schadendorf often used to say.

KAHL

'N d-day after t-t'morrow we're g-goin' t' have p-pigeon sh-sh-shooting.

LOTH

What is that--pigeon shooting?

HELEN

Ah, I can't bear such things. Surely it's a very merciless sport. Rough boys who throw stones at window panes are better employed.