The boy did not give any answer, it seemed to him all at once as though his tongue were paralysed. What should he tell those people sitting indoors about what he had been doing outside?
"He's sure to have been kept at school, ma'am," whispered the housemaid when she handed the meat. "I'll find it out from the other boys to-morrow, and tell you about it, ma'am."
"Oh, you!" The boy jumped up; although she had whispered it in a low voice, he had heard it all the same. His chair fell down behind him with a crash, and rushing up to the girl with clenched fist he seized hold of her so roughly that she gave a shrill scream and let the dish fall out of her hand.
"You goose, you goose!" he howled in a loud voice, and wanted to strike her. His father only pulled him away with difficulty.
"Wölfchen!" Käte's fork had fallen out of her hand with a clatter, and she was staring at her boy with dilated eyes.
The maid complained bitterly. He was always like that, he was unbearable, he had said before to her: "Hold your tongue!" No, she could not put up with it, she would rather leave. And she ran out of the room crying.
Paul Schlieben was extremely angry. "You are to be civil to inferiors. You are to be polite to them, just because they have to serve. Do you hear?" And he seized hold of the boy with a strong hand, laid him across his knees and gave him the whipping he so well deserved.
Wolfgang ground his teeth together and bore the punishment without uttering a sound and without a tear.
But every stroke fell on his mother's heart. She felt as if she herself had been beaten and severely bruised. When her husband took his usual rest after the stormy dinner, smoked, read the paper and took a little nap between whiles, she crept up to the nursery in which the boy had been locked. Was he crying?
She turned the key softly--he was kneeling on the chair near the window, his nose pressed flat against the pane, looking attentively out at the snow. He did not notice her at all. Then she went away again cautiously. She went downstairs again, but her mind was not sufficiently at rest to read in her room; she crept about the house softly as though she had no peace. Then she heard Lisbeth say to the cook in the kitchen between the rattling of plates: "I shall certainly not put up with it. Not from such a rude boy. What has he got to do here?"