"My mother tried to make me believe no evil of you. She spoke nothing but good of any one, and especially against her relations she would hear no tales. 'To speak evil of a brother is to slander yourself,' she used to say."
"Yes, yes; she had plenty of proverbs. 'Marie Lenz used to say so and so,' is in every one's mouth. Nothing but good should be spoken of the dead, and in fact there can no evil be said of her."
The young man cast a sad glance at his uncle. He always managed to put a sting even into his kindliest words.
"How often she has said to me lately," continued the young man, "and how it pained me to hear her, 'Lenz, I have lived six years too long for you. You ought to have married at five-and-twenty; it will come harder now. You have grown too much used to my ways, and they cannot last.' I could not persuade her out of the idea. It imbittered her death-bed."
"She was right," said the sugar-eater. "She was too good-natured; self-willed she was also, but that was no matter. Her good-nature spoiled you. I did not mean to tell you so now, though; another time would be better. Come, do as I bid you, and don't be such a baby. You act as if you did not know which way to turn. It is all in the course of nature that your mother should die before you, and you have nothing to reproach yourself with in your treatment of her."
"No, thank God!"
"Show yourself a man, then, and stop crying and bawling. I never saw anybody cry in all my life as you did in the churchyard."
"I cannot tell you how I felt, uncle. I wept for my mother, but also for myself. When the Liederkranz sang the songs that I had always sung with them, and I had to stand there dumb and dead, I felt as if I were really dead, and they were singing at my grave and I could not join in."
"You are--" said the old man. He was about to add something, but choked it down and walked on. The little dog that was running in front looked up wonderingly in his master's face, as if he hardly recognized the look he saw there.
Presently the old man stopped. "I am going back," he said. "Only one word more with you. Take into your house none of your mother's relations whom afterwards you will have to send away. They will forget all your kindness, and only be vexed that it cannot continue. Neither give anything away, no matter who asks. If you are tempted to, go off somewhere for a week or so, and, when you come home, keep the keys to yourself. Now good by, and be a man!"