"Thank you, good Gottlieb," said she meeting him at the door, "thank you, your uncle has been unfortunate this morning; but come with me to the dairy, and you shall have the cream of an entire pan of milk."
"The milk also, if you please, aunty, I feel myself able to devour every thing, pan and all."
"Well, satisfy yourself. By and by we will go to my bleachery and you may select a piece of linen.—Do you understand?"
"Not a word. It is all a mystery. But I do know that there is not a nephew on the entire Scandinavian peninsula, who possesses an aunt with such an affectionate disposition."
"Ah, you flatterer, it is well that you are my nephew or else Fabian might be jealous."
"Well I am not sure but that he may yet have an occasion, for, I am not aware that nephews are forbidden to love their aunts."
From that day forward Gottlieb was taken under the especial protection of his aunt, and as her favorite he was certain of a comfortable and pleasant life. When she became acquainted with his manners, virtues and accomplishments, her esteem for him was, if possible, doubly increased.
What could he not do, the dear boy? Not to speak of his wonderful success in amusing little Jean Ulrick, Mr. Fabian's sole heir, he was able to read aloud to his aunt from her favorite volume, and to repeat with almost sublime patience, all those tender passages to which she in a plaintive tone would sigh de capo. More than all this. He could sing—the model nephew—and accompany his voice with the guitar not only to the tune of "my love and I," but also to his aunt's favorite ballad, "In the shadows of the wood; in the cavern hid away." And finally there was not a female domestic in the house who dared to compete with Gottlieb in the art of chopping string beans. In short, he was a nephew whose peer could not be found in all Sweden, and who knows whether the piece of linen he chose from the bleachery was the last he received from his indulgent aunt.
Poor Gottlieb, while you are thus the prime favorite of your strong minded aunt, having free access to the pantries and dairy-rooms, have you no misgivings that the day will arrive when the doors of this house shall be closed against you? Relentless fate who ever demands a sacrifice. How true are the words of the wise Solomon, "All is vanity and vexation of spirit; and there is no profit under the sun." But it is not to be believed that Mr. Fabian's slumbers were disturbed because his wife had deserted him. No, he even preferred the company of hunger and thirst rather than that of his Ulgenie. Not that this state of mind originated from the many lectures he had received from his wife. Ah, no, there were far more powerful reasons; but it is certain that if Mistress Ulrica had suspected that her husband's indifference arose from any other motive than the wish to escape a deserved punishment she would have, undoubtedly, increased the vigor of her tongue to such a pitch that his house would have been uncomfortably warm to him.
After dining upon Gottlieb's partridge which had done much to smoothe her ruffled temper, Mrs. Ulrica was thus insinuatingly addressed by her husband: