CHAPTER II
“What is the matter, Betsy?” said the Consul, as he came to the table and lifted up the plate with which his soup was covered. “Aren’t you well? You don’t look just right to me.”
The round table in the great dining-room was grown very small. Around it there gathered in these days, besides the parents, only little Clara, now ten years old, Mamsell Jungmann, and Clothilde, as humble, lean, and hungry as ever. The Consul looked about him: every face was long and gloomy. What had happened? He himself was troubled and anxious; for the Bourse was unsteady, owing to this complicated Schleswig-Holstein affair. And still another source of disquiet was in the air; when Anton had gone to fetch in the meat course, the Consul heard what had happened. Trina, the cook, who had never before been anything but loyal and dutiful to her mistress, had suddenly shown clear signs of revolt. To the Frau Consul’s great vexation, she had been maintaining relations—a sort of spiritual affinity, it seemed—with the butcher’s apprentice; and that man of blood must have influenced her political views in a most regrettable way. The Consul’s wife had addressed some reproach to her in the matter of an unsuccessful sauce, and she had put her naked arms akimbo and delivered herself as follows: “You jus’ wait, Frau Consul; ’tain’ goin’ t’ be much longer—there’ll come another order inter the world. ’N’ then I’ll be sittin’ on the sofa in a silk gownd, an’ you’ll be servin’ me.” Naturally, she received summary notice.
The Consul shook his head. He himself had had similar troubles. The old porters and labourers were of course re-
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