The captain limped out into the cellar, but Barbara was already standing
behind the table again, moving the irons.

"When I am rich," she exclaimed, in reply to Wolf, who asked her to stop
her work in this happy hour and share the delicious wine with him and her
father, "I shall shun such maid-servant's business. But what else can be
done? We have less money than we need to keep up our position, and that
must be remedied. Besides, a neatly crimped ruff is necessary if a poor
girl like me is to stand beside the others in the singing rehearsal early
to-morrow morning. Poor folks are alike everywhere, and, so long as I
can do no better--but luck will come to me, too, some day--this right
hand must be my maid. Let it alone, or my iron will burn your fingers!"

This threat was very nearly fulfilled, for Wolf had caught her right hand
to hold it firmly while he at last compelled her to hear that his future
destiny depended upon her decision.

How much easier he had expected to find the wooing! Yet how could it
be otherwise? Every young man in Ratisbon was probably courting this
peerless creature. No doubt she had already rebuffed many another as
sharply as she had just prevented him from seizing her hand. If her
manner had grown more independent, she had learned to defend herself
cleverly.

He would first try to assail her heart with words, and they were at his
disposal in black and white. He had placed in the little box with the
breastpin a piece of paper on which he had given expression to his
feelings in verse. Hitherto it had remained unnoticed and fluttered to
the ground. Picking it up, he introduced his suit, after a brief
explanation, by reading aloud the lines which he had composed in