With flowers and foliage which Petrea obtained, heaven knows how!—but when people are resolutely bent on anything they find out the means to do it—with these, then, with lights, a good fire, with a table covered with his favourite dishes and such like, although in a somewhat disagreeably public-house room, such a picture of comfort and pleasantness was presented as the Assessor much loved.
Fathers and mothers, and all the members of happy families, are accustomed to birthday festivals, flower-garlands, and well-covered tables; but nobody had celebrated the birthday of the Assessor during his solitary wandering; he had not been indulged with those little flower-surprises of life—if one may so call them; hence it happened that he entered from the dark, wet street into this festal room with an exclamation of astonishment and heartfelt pleasure.
Petrea, on her part, was inexpressibly cordial, and was quite happy when she saw the pains which she had taken to entertain her old friend succeed so well. The two spent a pleasant evening together. They made each other mutually acquainted with the evil omens and the impressions which they had occasioned, and bantered one another a little thereon; but decided positively that such fore-tokenings for the most part—betoken nothing at all.
As they separated for the night the Assessor pressed Petrea's hand with the assurance that very rarely had a day given him such a joyous evening. Grateful for these words, and grateful for the hope of soon finding again the lost and wept friend of her youth, Petrea went to rest, but the Assessor remained up late—midnight saw him still writing.
Man and woman! There is a deal, especially in novels, said about man and woman, as of separate beings. However that may be, human beings are they both—and as human beings, as morally sentient and thinking creatures, they influence one another for life. Their ways and means are different; and it is this very difference which, by mutual benefits, and mutual endeavours to sweeten life to one another, produces what is so beautiful and so perfect.
The clearest sun brightened the following morning; but the eyes of the Assessor were troubled, as if he had enjoyed but little repose. Whilst he and Petrea were breakfasting, he was called out to inspect something relative to the carriage.
Was it now the hereditary sin of mother Eve, or was it any other cause which induced Petrea at this moment to approach the table on which the Assessor's money lay, together with papers ready to be put into a travelling writing-case. Enough! she did it—she did certainly what no upright reader will pardon her for doing, quickly ran her eyes over one of the papers which seemed just lately to have received from the pen impressions of thought, and she took it. Shortly afterwards the Assessor entered, and as it was somewhat late, he hastily put together his papers, and they set off on their journey.
The weather was glorious, and Petrea rejoiced like—nay, even more than a child, over the objects which met her eyes, and which, after the rain, stood in the bright sunshine, as if in the glory of a festive-day. The world was to her now more than ever a magic ring; not the perplexing, half-heathenish, but the purely Christian, in which everything, every moment has its signification, even as every dewdrop receives its beaming point of light from the splendour of the sun. Autumn was, above all, Petrea's favourite season, and its abundance now made her soul overflow with joyful thoughts. It is the time in which the earth gives a feast to all her children, and joyous and changing scenes were represented by the waysides. Here the corn-field raised to heaven its golden sheaves, and the harvesters sang; there, around the purple berries of the service-tree, circled beautiful flocks of the twittering silktails; round the solitary huts, the flowering potato-fields told that the fruit was ripe, and merry little barefooted children sprang into the wood to gather bilberries. Petrea thanked heaven in her heart for all the innocent joys of earth. She thought of her home, of her parents, of her sisters, of Sara, who would soon again be one of their circle, and of how she (Petrea) would cherish her, and care for her, and reconcile her to life and to happiness. In the blessed, beautiful morning hour, all thoughts clothed themselves in light. Petrea felt quite happy, and the joke which she thought of playing on her friend the Assessor with the stolen piece of paper, contributed not a little to screw up her life's spirit to greater liveliness. "From the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh," and Petrea involuntarily influenced her travelling companion so far that they both amused themselves with bombarding little children on the waysides with apples and pears, whereby they were not at all terrified.
They had now taken the same road upon which Sara had travelled, and in the first inn at which they stopped, their hopes were strengthened; for Sara had been there, and had taken thence a horse to the next public-house. All was on the way towards home. So continued it also at the three following stations; but at the fifth, they suddenly lost all traces of her. No one there had seen a traveller answering to her description, nor was her name to be found in the Travellers' Day-book. No! a great uneasiness for Petrea. After some deliberation, she and the Assessor determined to return to the public-house whence they were just come, in order to discover clearly in what direction Sara had gone thence.