'Your courtship take precedence of that of the great prophet Tuiskoshirer!' cried one of the ragged bridal train, springing towards Clara, seizing her by the arm and endeavoring forcibly to drag her to her detested suitor. Alf instantly seized him by the body and with a powerful swing threw him over the garden fence. 'Who else will interfere?' cried he, lustily, making after the multitude, who in great trepidation were seeking the door.
'An insolent reply was all that I wanted,' snarled Tuiskoshirer, as he followed his retreating rabble.
'Sister and sister-in-law at the same time?' asked Eliza in a tone of bitterness, pointing towards Clara. 'I might at least have been previously informed of it,' said she, leaving the garden in a rage.
'Necessity knows no law, dear Eliza,' pleaded Alf, following her.
'It is a heavy duty which I have taken upon me,' said Clara to herself, 'to preserve the appearance of coldness toward the man whom I love better than all the world beside; but God will help me.'
CHAPTER XII.
In the course of the next week Alf had sufficiently softened Eliza's anger: she had with a heavy heart learned to share her beloved husband's name with her unloved sister, and Alf now went to his worthy kinsman, the former burgomaster Kippenbrock, to invite him to the marriage feast. He found the good man a perfect contrast to his terrible ex-colleague; in the short brown butcher's jacket and white apron, with his sleeves rolled up, he was standing in his shop, making sausages;--his full, red, contented face covered with glistening drops of perspiration, a proof that he pursued his occupation with right good will.
'I am rejoiced, good kinsman, that you have so easily submitted to the loss of political greatness.'
'Yes, kinsman,' answered Gerhard familiarly, laying down his sausage-knife, 'to thee I may say it; thou wilt keep clean lips, and so it will remain in the family--when I was compelled to lay down the burgomastership and take off the chain of honor, I might as well have been knocked on the head with an axe, like one of my own fat oxen, and I bore my deposition not at all submissively; but as I reflected more upon the subject, I came to consider it less an evil, and now all is well with me. There was much vexation about the office also, and I oftentimes felt that I was not adapted to it. When a man once undertakes to perform duties, which his education has not prepared him for, he always continues unsuitable for the place, and often inadvertently does great injustice to the people. It was truly a fortunate circumstance, however, that my learned colleague Knipperdolling had sufficient acuteness to keep us out of difficulty, else I should have been compelled to abandon my office on the first day. Now, comparatively, I live in heaven, slaughtering my oxen and my swine, which I understand thoroughly--my sausages are always the best in Munster--and it is wholly a different thing when one is quite at home in his employment. Mark me, if the chief prophet should at any time offer me an office, so true as my name is Gerhard Kippenbrock, I would say NO, and would stick to my hatchet and chopping-block!'
Alf praised his noble renunciation of office, and then formally brought forward his invitation.