Both the children--for children they still were with their respective sixteen and seventeen years--joked and made merry over their conceit, as such thoughtless young creatures will. Accustomed constantly to tease and torment each other, they had no misgivings about including a third person in their sport. They never reflected how little Waldemar's stern, unbending character was suited to such trifling, or to what bitter earnest he might turn the play imagined by them in the foolish gaiety of their hearts.
CHAPTER VI.
Some weeks had passed. The summer was drawing to an end, and all hands at Altenhof were busy with the harvest. The Squire, who had spent his whole morning in the fields, looking after the men and directing the work, had come home weary and exhausted, and was settling himself down for his well-earned after-dinner nap. Whilst making his preparations for it, he looked round every now and then, half angrily, half admiringly, at his adopted son, who was standing by the window dressed in his usual riding gear, waiting for his horse to be brought round.
"So you are really going over to C---- in the heat of the day?" asked Herr Witold. "I wish you joy of your two hours' ride. There is not a bit of shade all the way. You will be getting a sunstroke--but you don't seem able to live now without paying your respects to your mother at least three or four times a week."
The young man frowned. "I can't refuse to go if my mother wishes to see me. Now that we are so near each other she has a right to require that I should pay her some visits."
"Well, she makes a famous use of the right," said Witold; "but I should like to know how she has contrived to turn you into an obedient son. I have tried in vain for nearly twenty years. She managed it in a single day; she certainly always had the knack of governing people."
"You ought to know that I do not allow myself to be governed, uncle," replied Waldemar, in a tone of irritation. "My mother met me in a conciliatory spirit, and I neither can nor will repulse her advances roughly, as you did whilst I was under your guardianship."
"They tell you often enough that you are under it no longer, I'll be bound," interrupted his uncle. "You have laid great stress on that for the last few weeks; but it is quite unnecessary, my boy. You have, I am sorry to say, never done anything but just what pleased you, and often acted in opposition to my will. Your coming of age is a mere form, for me, at least, though not for the Baratowskis. They best know what use they mean to make of it, and why they are continually reminding you of your freedom."
"What is the good of these perpetual suspicions?" cried Waldemar, in a passion. "Am I to give up all intercourse with my relations for no other reason but because you dislike them?"
"I wish you could put your dear relations' tenderness to the test," said Witold, ironically. "They would not trouble themselves so much about you, if you did not happen to be master of Wilicza. Now, now, don't fly out again. We have had quarrels enough about it of late, I am not going to spoil my nap to-day. This confounded bathing season will be over soon, and then we shall be quit of them all."