"Oh, never mind him! I wish to see no one dissatisfied to-day," said Lenz, kindly. "I am only vexed that Faller is not here. I sent a messenger to him, but I see he is not come."
Pilgrim danced the first dance with Annele, who said to him, "You are a first-rate dancer."
"But not a first-rate painter, you think?"
"I never said so."
"At all events, you won't be painted by me; and yet I had rather a fancy to-day to take your portrait. Besides, I don't think you would be easy to take: you are pretty so long as you are talking, but when you are silent there is something in your face I don't like. I can't say what it is."
"If you could only paint as well as you can chatter!"
"Well! well! you shall never be painted by me!
"I have no wish to go down to posterity painted by you," said Annele, who soon recovered her good humour.
The bridal pair were summoned to the lower room, where the most respectable of the connexions had assembled round Petrowitsch. They wished him to declare distinctly what sum he intended to bequeath to Lenz. Don Bastian, Pilgrim's cunning landlord, was the principal speaker. He had a good opportunity of larding his shabby wedding gift with another man's bacon, and he drove Petrowitsch into such a corner, that he could scarcely slip through his fingers. The blacksmith, who valued himself on being Lenz's only neighbour,—he lived about a mile from him, but his house was the only one to be seen from the Morgenhalde,—had been a schoolfellow of Petrowitsch, and knew how to put him into good humour, by recalling old times.
The Landlady thought that the presence of the young couple might do good, so she had sent for them. When they joined the circle, Petrowitsch, who was by this time at his wit's end, said—"Here is Lenz; he knows what my intentions are. In our family we don't send the public crier about to announce our affairs. You know, Lenz, how we stand, don't you?"