Faller started off for the valley with the paper, leaving Lenz to his work. But before sitting down to it he wound up one of his musical clocks and made it play a choral. The piece goes well, he said to himself, nodding his head approvingly over the wheel on which he was filing. It was her--my mother's--favorite tune. The great musical clock with the handsomely carved nut-wood case, as tall as a good-sized wardrobe, was called "The Magic Flute," from the overture of that opera, which was the longest of five pieces that it played. It was already sold to a large tea-dealer in Odessa. A smaller clock stood beside it, and near that a third, on which Lenz was working. At noon, after laboring uninterruptedly all the morning, he began to feel hungry; but no sooner had he sat down to his solitary meal than all hunger forsook him. He asked the old serving-maid to eat with him, as she used to do in his mother's lifetime. She consented, after a great show of maidenly delicacy at the idea of dining alone with so young a man; but by the time the soup was finished, she had so far recovered her self-possession as to bring up the question of his marriage and gave her advice against it.
"Who says I mean to marry?"
"I think, if you do, you ought to marry the bailiff's daughter Katharine. She comes of a respectable family, and has the greatest respect for you; she actually swears by you. That would be just the right sort of wife,--not one who would treat you like the very ground she walks on. Girls nowadays are so--so exacting, they care for nothing but dress and show."
"I am not thinking of marrying; certainly not now."
"You are quite right. It is not at all necessary you should. Take my word for it, you will never be better off than you are now. I am used to your ways, and I will keep everything so exactly as your mother did that you will think she is alive again. Don't your beans taste good now? Your mother taught me to cook them so. She understood everything from the greatest to the smallest. You will be as comfortable as can be when we are by ourselves. You see if you are not."
"I don't think we shall keep on as we are, Franzl," said Lenz.
"So you have some one already in your mind,--have you? People fancy Lenz thinks of nothing but his clocks and his mother. Much they know about it! If it is only some girl that comes of a good family. Katharine, now, would be a wife for every day in the week,--for working days and for holidays. She can look after the house and the field, and can spin--you'd think she would spin the very straw down from the roof. Then, too, she swears by you; all you say and all you do is perfect. She always says whatever comes from Lenz is right, however it may look,--like your working yesterday, for instance. Besides, she is well off; what she inherits from her mother alone would be a portion for one of your children."
"I have no thought of marrying, Franzl. Perhaps--I don't know, but perhaps--I shall sell or lease my house and go abroad."
Franzl stared at him in speechless amazement, forgetting even to carry her spoon to her mouth.
"I will provide for you, Franzl; you shall want for nothing. But I have never been out into the world, and should like once to see and learn something. Perhaps I may further my art in some way; who knows?"