dressed in that way when the men came to sell our house in the Kramgasse
at auction. She must have been one of the women under whose management,
as a matter of course, the household is neglected."

"How can you talk so about your own mother?" Wolf interrupted in a
somewhat reproachful tone.

"Because we are not here to flatter the dead or to speak falsely to
each other, but to understand how matters are between us," she answered
gravely. "How you are constituted is best known to yourself, but it
seems to me that while far away you have formed a totally false opinion
of me, whom you placed upon the throne of your heart, and I wish to
correct it, that you may not plunge into misfortune like a deluded
simpleton and drag me with you. Where, as in my case, so many things
are different from what the good and humble would desire them to be,
it is not very pleasant to open one's whole heart to another, and there
is no one else in the world for whom I would do it. Perhaps I shall
not succeed at all, for often enough I am incomprehensible to myself.
I shall understand myself most speedily if I bring before my mind my
father's and my mother's nature, and recall the ancient saying that young
birds sing like the old ones. My father--I love him in spite of all his
eccentricities and weaknesses. Dear me! he needs me so much, and would
be miserable without me. Though he is a head taller than you, he has
remained a child."

"But a good, kind-hearted one!" Wolf interrupted with warm affection.

"Of course," Barbara eagerly responded; "and if I have inherited from him
anything which is ill-suited to me, it is the fearless courage which does
not beseem us women. We progress much farther if we hold back timidly.