"How strange it is my dear Fabian, that every time you fish you sit still there on your seat like a perfect automaton!"
With this preamble, Mistress Ulrica opened the floodgates of her ill-humor, to which on occasions like the present especially she gave perfect freedom.
"An automaton, my dear!"
"A post, a perfect post. You do not even turn your head; just as though the company of your wife and child was the most wearisome thing of your life."
But dearest Ulrique Eugenie, I must keep watch for a bite. If I turn around—"
"You would not lose the sense of feeling if you should; but you hope, I suppose, that persons on the shore will think you master of the boat. Simpleton! What folly to think that!"
"Dear Ulrique Eugenie, shall I ask if you have spared my nephew your ill-humor that you may vent it on me. It is my opinion—"
"What is your opinion, sir?"
"O nothing further than that I am sufficiently burdened with your natural bad-temper already, without having it increased by the aid of another."
"Burdened!—ill-humor—bad temper!—is the man mad? Do you thus speak to me, your wedded wife, who bears your stupid indifference; your want of tenderness and love with angelic forbearance? O, this is too much! It is shameful! It is undeserved!"