I
One evening Daniel called on Benda to take leave of him for a long
while.
Just as he was about to enter the front gate, he saw Herr Carovius's dog
standing there showing his teeth. The beast's bloodshot eyes were fixed
on a ten-year old girl who was likewise on the point of entering the
house, but, afraid of the dog, she did not dare take another step. The
animal had dragged his chain along behind him, and stood there now,
snarling in a most vicious way.
Daniel took the child by the hand and led it back a few steps, after he
had frightened the dog into silence by some rough commands. "Who are
you?" he asked the girl.
"Dorothea Doederlein," was the reply.
"Ah," said Daniel. He could not help but laugh, for there was a comic
tone of precociousness in the girl's manner of speaking. But she was a
very pretty child. A sly, smiling little face peeped out from under her
hood, and her velvet mantle with great pearl buttons enshrouded a dainty
figure.
"You should have been in bed long ago, Dorothea," said Daniel. "What
will the night watchman think when he comes along and finds you up? He
will take you by the collar, and lead you off to jail."
Dorothea told him why she was still up and why she was alone. She had
been visiting a school friend, and the maid who called for her wanted to
get a loaf of bread from the bakery before going up stairs. She related
the story of her meeting with the dog with so much coquetry and detail
that Daniel was delighted at the contrast between this rodomontade and
the quaking anxiety in which he first found her.
"You are a fraud, Dorothea," said Daniel, and called to mind the
unpleasant sensation she aroused in him when he saw her for the first
time years ago.
In the meanwhile the maid had come up with the loaf of bread; she looked
with astonishment at the two as they stood there gossiping, and
immediately took the child into her charge, conscious as she was of her
own dilatoriness. With a few piercing shrieks she drove Caesar back from
the gate, and as he ran across the street Dorothea cast one triumphant
glance back at Daniel, feeling that she had proved to him that she was
not the least afraid of the dog.