cunning artist out of Welschland had wrought on it the story of the
Drachenfels. Her bosom heaved the battle up and down.

This cameo was a north star to German manhood, but caused many chaste
expressions of abhorrence from Aunt Lisbeth, Gottlieb's unmarried sister,
who seemed instinctively to take part with the Dragon. She was a
frail-fashioned little lady, with a face betokening the perpetual smack
of lemon, and who reigned in her brother's household when the good wife
was gone. Margarita's robustness was beginning to alarm and shock Aunt
Lisbeth's sealed stock of virtue.

'She must be watched, such a madl as that,' said Aunt Lisbeth. 'Ursula!
what limbs she has!'

Margarita was watched; but the spy being neither foe nor friend, nothing
was discovered against her. This did not satisfy Aunt Lisbeth, whose own
suspicion was her best witness. She allowed that Margarita dissembled
well.

'But,' said she to her niece, 'though it is good in a girl not to flaunt
these naughtinesses in effrontery, I care for you too much not to say--Be
what you seem, my little one!'

'And that am I!' exclaimed Margarita, starting up and towering.

'Right good, my niece,' Lisbeth squealed; 'but now Frau Groschen lies in
God's acre, you owe your duty to me, mind! Did you confess last week?'

'From beginning to end,' replied Margarita.