"I am not rich," answered Lenz. He smiled at the taunt, and yet it vexed him.
Two pendulums can only vibrate simultaneously, and with the same number of strokes, when they are in a similar atmosphere, or at the same distance from the centre of the earth.
Lenz became daily more quiet and reserved, and when he spoke to his wife, he could not help being astonished that she found so much to say on every point. If he chanced to say in the morning, "What a thick fog we have to day!" she snapped him up instantly, saying: "Yes, and so early in the autumn too, but we may have bright weather yet: we in the hills can never depend on weather, and who knows which of us wants rain, and which fine weather, just as it may suit best what we have to do. If our good Lord were to suit the weather to the taste of everybody," &c. &c.
There was a long discussion about every trifle,—how a waggoner had been spoken to while his horses were getting a feed outside,—or a passing stranger who wanted something to eat, and who, in spite of the cover being quickly laid, had to wait a long time for dinner.
Lenz shrugged his shoulders, and was silent after such reproofs, indeed he often scarcely spoke during the whole day, and his wife said sometimes good-humouredly, and sometimes angrily: "You are a tiresome, silent creature."
He smiled at the reproach, but it hurt his feelings all the same.
The apprehensions entertained about the manufactory for clocks proved quite unfounded, for, on the contrary, the business for private hands never had been so flourishing. Lenz was very proud of having prophesied this. He received much praise on this account, but Annele saw nothing remarkable in such a proof of his foresight: of course it is but natural that each should understand his own business, but one thing was quite certain, that the Techniker and the Doctor's son were fast making money, while the original clockmakers were thankful and content to remain in the old beaten path.
Annele frequently praised Pröbler now, who at least tried to make new discoveries.
Lenz, however, was quite engrossed with his work, and said to Annele: "When I think each morning I rise—you may work honestly to day, and your work will prosper and be completed,—I feel as if I had a sun in my heart that never set."
"You have a talent for preaching, you ought to have been a pastor," said Annele, leaving the room and privately thinking—-"There, that's a hit at you; we are all to listen to him, but what any one else says is of no consequence at all; that was a capital hit at him."