DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62133#0119
FRAULEIN SANCHEN.
103
faces administering the gruel! Pray heaven they may be
disappointed of this pleasure. We are a regular God-send
to them, I’m sure ; for we are their great occupation.
When they have said their prayers., and cooked their
dinner, and gossiped with a neighbour, they have now the
delight of caring for the two English Fraulein. Their
astonishment at our being here “ all alone, so very, very,
very far from our homes” too, as they persist in our being,
is unbounded ; and they persist, also, in our being “ so
very young/’ and this astonishment is only equalled by
their astonishment over our extraordinary, inconceivable
industry! and as it happens, since we have been here, we
have been anything but industrious ! Of course, if we
are not arranging our goods and chattels, we are reading
or writing, or sketching, or Clare is singing at the piano.
Girls, whether English or foreign, do not usually, I imagine,
sit with their hands folded quietly before them all day long.
But over the reading, writing, sketching, and singing,
what extraordinary exclamations there have been from the
good old souls !
“ Immer so fleissig ! Immer so jleissig i”—“ Always
so industrious ! always so industrious !” they cry, when
they enter our rooms, till we grow quite nervously to dread
the advent of the sistersand they always enter together,
the one to direct, the other to execute; the one pretends
to dust, the other scours.
In my eyes, Fraulein Sanchen is a much more interest-
ing person than the widow of the Tax-gatherer : she, poor
Fraulein, is always either scouring, fetching water or wrood,
or cooking, or waiting upon us, or brushing our shoes and
dresses, or running out on errands; she is never at rest,
except when she prays and sleeps for a few hours—and
that is indeed only for a very few, for she is up ever so
early, as soon as the lark begins his song, in order to make
103
faces administering the gruel! Pray heaven they may be
disappointed of this pleasure. We are a regular God-send
to them, I’m sure ; for we are their great occupation.
When they have said their prayers., and cooked their
dinner, and gossiped with a neighbour, they have now the
delight of caring for the two English Fraulein. Their
astonishment at our being here “ all alone, so very, very,
very far from our homes” too, as they persist in our being,
is unbounded ; and they persist, also, in our being “ so
very young/’ and this astonishment is only equalled by
their astonishment over our extraordinary, inconceivable
industry! and as it happens, since we have been here, we
have been anything but industrious ! Of course, if we
are not arranging our goods and chattels, we are reading
or writing, or sketching, or Clare is singing at the piano.
Girls, whether English or foreign, do not usually, I imagine,
sit with their hands folded quietly before them all day long.
But over the reading, writing, sketching, and singing,
what extraordinary exclamations there have been from the
good old souls !
“ Immer so fleissig ! Immer so jleissig i”—“ Always
so industrious ! always so industrious !” they cry, when
they enter our rooms, till we grow quite nervously to dread
the advent of the sistersand they always enter together,
the one to direct, the other to execute; the one pretends
to dust, the other scours.
In my eyes, Fraulein Sanchen is a much more interest-
ing person than the widow of the Tax-gatherer : she, poor
Fraulein, is always either scouring, fetching water or wrood,
or cooking, or waiting upon us, or brushing our shoes and
dresses, or running out on errands; she is never at rest,
except when she prays and sleeps for a few hours—and
that is indeed only for a very few, for she is up ever so
early, as soon as the lark begins his song, in order to make