[Illustration: HERMANN SUDERMANN] DAME CARE

BY HERMANN SUDERMANN

TRANSLATED BY BERTHA OVERBECK



CHAPTER I.

Just when Meyerhofer's estate was to be sold by auction, his third son Paul
was born.

That was a hard time indeed.

Frau Elsbeth, with her haggard face and melancholy smile, lay in her big
four-post bed, with the cradle of the new-born child near her, and listened
to every noise that reached her in her sad sickroom from the yard and the
house.

At each suspicious sound she started up, and each time, when a strange
man's voice was heard, or a vehicle came driving along with a rolling
sound, she asked, clinging with great anxiety to the bedposts:

"Has it come to the worst? Has it come to the worst?"

Nobody answered her. The doctor had given strict orders to keep every
excitement from her, but little he thought, good man, that this constant
suspense would torment her a thousand times more than the most terrible
certainty.