"Mother also prays that you may go to heaven, father."
Mr. Tiralla was also very touched to hear that. Oh, yes, she was a splendid little woman was his Sophia, and loved him even if she didn't always show it, especially lately. Ugh, how cold and forbidding she was sometimes; she made you freeze. But she was a pious woman. Then knitting his brows together, as though something were tormenting him, he said to the child, "When you are married, my dear Rosa, always try to please your husband; he'll like that." He gave a little sigh, but then he laughed. "When Mikolai comes back from the army and marries, I'll rub it into him, too, 'Take a complaisant wife.' Ha, ha, his mother, my late wife, Hanusia, was complaisant enough, that's certain--ha, ha."
"Will Mikolai soon be coming back from the army?" inquired Rosa. She had been such a stupid little thing when he had gone away three years before. But now she was wiser, and she realized how nice it was to have a little brother. The only time he had come home on furlough during all those years she had been very ill with scarlet fever, and he hadn't been allowed to come to her on account of the infection. She was, therefore, doubly glad to see him now. How she would love him. "Will my little brother soon be coming back?" she repeated anxiously.
"H'm, a nice little brother!" laughed her father. "Do you really think they could do with a 'little brother' in the horse guards? He's a big brother, I can tell you, an enormous fellow. He was as tall as I when I went to see him last autumn. And what fists he has got. He won't want a team of oxen to pull the cart, he'll do it himself. But he'll be good to his little sister. Who wouldn't be good to you, my wee one?" He took hold of her little face with his big hand and stroked it tenderly and carefully.
Rosa smiled. "I'll love him," she cried enthusiastically, "and he'll love me. We're all to love each other, Jesus bids us do so."
"Yes, that's what I think, too," said her father, "we're all to love each other." He suddenly thought of his wife, from whom he had neither received kiss nor friendly look that day. So instead of inspecting his corn, as he had intended doing, he returned home with his daughter.
They walked hand in hand. Their figures--his thick-set, a massive tree-trunk, hers a delicate leaf blown about by the wind--could be seen afar off in the flat, treeless field.
Mrs. Tiralla was in the sitting-room with Böhnke, and saw them in the distance through the gateway. "There he is again," she said, with a look of disgust on her face.
Already? The schoolmaster sighed. He had been so delighted to find the woman he adored alone at home--he had seen little Rosa on her way to the village--and now they were so soon to be disturbed. What did that horrid fellow mean by always coming back? Böhnke quite forgot that this house to which he came regularly every Sunday and very often besides, belonged to Mr. Tiralla, and that the latter invariably received him with a loud welcome and ordered the best they had to be served up in his honour. But the farmer's presence always inconvenienced him, and especially to-day. Mrs. Tiralla had been about to pour out her heart to him, and the thought of the moment when at last he would be able to console the sad-looking woman made him tremble.
"I'm in trouble," she had said, when he had asked her if she had a headache. There were dark, heavy shadows under her eyes, and her pale mouth drooped so sadly that he had thought she was ill.