“Did she grieve after him?”
“I scarcely can say she did. She fretted, but I think it was for her own loneliness, and the want of that daily flattery she had grown so fond of. She became overbearing, and even insolent, too, with all her equals, and though for many a day she had been the spoiled child of the troop, many began to weary of her waywardness. I don't know how all this might have turned out, when, just as suddenly, she changed and became everything that she used to be.”
When the old man had got thus far, the girl arose, and without saying a word, laid the slate before us. Vaterchen, not very quick-sighted, could not at once understand the picture, but I caught it at once, and laughed immoderately. She had taken the scene where I had presented Vaterchen and herself to the ladies at the tea-table, and with an intense humor, sketched all the varying emotions of the incident.' The offended dignity of the old lady, the surprise and mortification of Miss Herbert, and my own unconscious pretension as I pointed to the “friends” who accompanied me, were drawn with the spirit of high caricature. Nor did she spare Vaterchen or herself; they were drawn, perhaps, with a more exaggerated satire than all the rest.
The old man no sooner comprehended the subject than he drew his hand across it, and turned to her with words of anger and reproach. I meant, of course, to interfere in her behalf, but it was needless; she fled, laughing, into the garden, and before many minutes were over, we heard her merry voice, with the tinkle of a guitar to assist it.
“There it is,” said Vaterchen, moodily. “What are you to do with a temperament like that?”
That was a question I was in no wise prepared to answer. Tintefleck's temperament seemed to be the very converse of my own. I was over eager to plan out everything in life; she appeared to be just as impulsively bent on risking all.
My head was always calculating eventualities; hers, it struck me, never worried itself about difficulties till in the midst of them. Now, Jean Paul tells us that when a man detects any exaggerated bias in his character, instead of endeavoring, by daily watching, to correct it, he will be far more successful if he ally himself with some one of a diametrically opposite humor. If he be rash, for instance, let him seek companionship with the sluggish. If his tendency bear to over-imagination, let him frequent the society of realists. Why, therefore, should not I and Tintefleck be mutually beneficial? Take the two different kinds of wood in a bow: one will supply resistance, the other flexibility. It was a pleasant notion, and I resolved to test it.
“Vaterchen,” said I, “call me to-morrow, when you get ready for the road. I will keep you company as far as Constance.”
“Ah, sir,” said he, with a sigh, “you will be well weary of us before half the journey is over; but you shall be obeyed.”