"Are you in earnest, or do you only want to fool me more?" asked Ivo, with a trembling voice, still clenching his fists.
"In earnest, 'pon honor. There's my hand."
"Well and good," said Ivo, taking his proffered hand. Perhaps the boy's original intention had been to hit upon a new way of teasing Ivo, or to oppress him with the grandeur of his protection; but Ivo's firmness turned the scales.
The arrival of the chaplain brought them all to order. The instruction given was that usually awarded as the first lesson in Latin grammar. In this country the problem is to decline "penna:" in Germany "mensa" is the word. When it was over, the boy with the embroidered collar, and his younger brother, accompanied Ivo to Mrs. Hankler's door. It was at the hands of the sons of the President-Judge that he received this distinction. Henceforward we may look with composure on his fortunes in the good town of Horb.
Mrs. Hankler's door was locked.
Ivo sat down on the step to wait for her. Sorrowful thoughts rose in his mind, though at first of every-day origin. He was hungry. He thought of them all at home,--how they were gathering round the table, while he alone was left outside and hungry in the world, with nobody to care for him. People ran by in a hurry, without even becoming aware of his existence. They were all going to the steaming bowls which awaited them: only he sat there as if he had fallen from the sky and had never had a home. "Every horse and every ox," said he, "has his food given him when it is time; but nobody thinks of me. I have two creutzers in my pocket; but then it would never do to break the money already."[8]
At last his home-sickness was too much for him: he jumped up and bounded homeward with long strides. As he turned the corner he met Mrs. Hankler, running over with apologies about having forgotten all about it and having been detained. "Come with me," was the peroration, "and I'll cook you some nice turnips, and put some pork in them for your mother's sake: your mother is a dear, good woman. And when you're a minister and I am dead, you must read a mass for me: won't you?"
Ivo was happy the moment he heard somebody talk to him about his mother. He felt as if he had travelled a thousand miles and had left home ten years ago. The Latin, the wide coat, the quarrels, the roast meat, the new comrade, the flight: he seemed to have had more adventures in half a day than formerly in half a year. He ate heartily: still, he was not quite at his ease with the strange old lady; something told him, indistinctly, that he had been removed from the basis of his prior existence, his father's house. A young forest-tree lifted out of its native soil and carried away on rattling wheels to adorn some distant hill might express, if it could speak, what was pressing so heavily on the heart of poor Ivo.
The afternoon studies were easier, being in German, and so conducted that Ivo could put in a word or two of his own now and then. In going home he joined the two other boys from his village,--Johnny's Constantine and Hansgeorge's Peter. Constantine said that it was the rule for the youngest student always to carry the books for the others; and Ivo took the double burden on himself without a murmur.