“That is so kind of you. But we always are here, you know.”
“Yes;—yes. But I feared that perhaps—. I know that with us we had to think more than once about it before we could make up our minds to pay the increased charges. The ‘Magistrat’ felt a little hurt about it.” To this the fraulein at first answered nothing, thinking that perhaps she ought not to make public the special benevolence shown by the Frau to herself and her sister. “A zwanziger and a half each is a great deal of money to add on,” said Madame Weiss.
“It is, indeed.”
“We might have got it cheaper elsewhere. And then I thought that perhaps you might have done so too.”
“She has made no increase to us,” said the poor lady, who at last was forced to tell the truth, as by not doing so she would have been guilty of a direct falsehood in allowing it to be supposed that she and her sister paid the increased price.
“Soh—oh—oh!” exclaimed Madame Weiss, clasping her hands together and bobbing her head up and down. “Soh—oh—oh!” She had found it all out.
Then, shortly after that—the next day—there was an uncomfortable perturbation of affairs at the Peacock, which was not indeed known to all the guests, but which to those who heard it, or heard of it, seemed for the time to be very terrible. Madame Weiss and the Frau had—what is commonly called—a few words together.
“Frau Frohmann,” said Madame Weiss, “I was quite astonished to hear from Agatha Tendel that you were only charging them the old prices.”
“Why shouldn’t I charge them just what I please—or nothing at all, if I pleased?” asked the Frau sharply.
“Of course you can. But I do think, among neighbours, there shouldn’t be one price to one and one to another.”
“Would it do you any good, Frau Weiss, if I were to charge those ladies more than they can pay? Does it do you any harm if they live here at a cheap rate?”
“Surely there should be one price—among neighbours!”
“Herr Weiss got my circular, no doubt. He knew. I don’t suppose he wants to live here at a rate less than it costs me to keep him. You and he can do what you like about coming. And you and he can do what you like about staying away. You knew my prices. I have not made any secret about the change. But as for interference between me and my other customers, it is what I won’t put up with. So now you know all about it.”
By the end of her speech the Frau had worked herself up into a grand passion, and spoke aloud, so that all near her heard her. Then there was a great commotion in the Peacock, and it was thought that the Weisses would go away. But they remained for their allotted time.
This was the only disturbance which took place, and it passed off altogether to the credit of the Frau. Something in a vague way came to be understood about fixed incomes;—so that Peter and Malchen, with the kaplan, even down to Seppel and Suse Krapp, were aware that the two frauleins ought not to be made to pay as much as the prosperous magistrate who had had his salary raised. And then it was quite understood that the difference made in favour of those two poor ladies was a kindness shown to them, and could not therefore be an injury to anyone else.
Later in the year, when the establishment was full and everything was going on briskly, when the two puddings were at the very height of their glory, and the wild fruits were brought up on the supper-table in huge bowls, when the Brunnenthal was at its loveliest, and the Frau was appearing on holidays in her gayest costume, the Cartwrights returned to the valley. Of course they had ordered their rooms much beforehand; and the Frau, trusting altogether to the wisdom of those counsels which she did not even yet quite understand, had kept her very best apartments for them. The greeting between them was most friendly—the Frau condescending to put on something of her holiday costume to add honour to their arrival;—a thing which she had never been known to do before on behalf of any guests. Of course there was not then time for conversation; but a day or two had not passed before
