fist, keeping time to the music, proving she was not out of the
festivities.

"She can't forget how wild Theresa has been," said Frau Ledermann. "Who
could--with the child there? I heard that last Sunday evening Theresa had
hysterics and said that she would not marry this man. They had to get the
priest to her."

"Where is the other one?" asked Frau Brechenmacher. "Why didn't he marry
her?"

The woman shrugged her shoulders.

"Gone--disappeared. He was a traveller, and only stayed at their house two
nights. He was selling shirt buttons--I bought some myself, and they were
beautiful shirt buttons--but what a pig of a fellow! I can't think what he
saw in such a plain girl--but you never know. Her mother says she's been
like fire ever since she was sixteen!"

Frau Brechenmacher looked down at her beer and blew a little hole in the
froth.

"That's not how a wedding should be," she said; "it's not religion to love
two men."

"Nice time she'll have with this one," Frau Rupp exclaimed. "He was
lodging with me last summer and I had to get rid of him. He never changed
his clothes once in two months, and when I spoke to him of the smell in his
room he told me he was sure it floated up from the shop. Ah, every wife
has her cross. Isn't that true, my dear?"