Klaus showed his teeth with delight at his Christel's jest.
"Whatever I do, pleases him," said Christel, shutting the door with mock-disgust at his black face.
"Better that than if it were the other way," I said.
"Yes: but sometimes he carries it too far. I often am ashamed, and wonder what people think of it. And he gets worse every year; I really don't know what I shall do when the children are older; I often think they will lose all respect for their father."
While Christel thus unbosomed her secret woe, she was neatly and deftly setting the table, while I, standing before the stove, in which a cheerful fire was burning, thought of by-gone times: of that evening when I met the Wild Zehren first at Pinnow's forge, and how Christel had set the table and waited, and how she afterwards besought me not to go with him. Had I then followed her counsel! All would have been different. Perhaps better, perhaps not. But so it had happened, and----
"You must put up with what we have," said Christel.
"That I will, Christel, that I will!" I said, seizing both her hands and pressing them with a warmth which seemed a little to startle her.
"How wild you are still," she said, looking up at me with her blue eyes in surprise, but with no mixture of displeasure. "Exactly as you used to be."
"You don't like me any the less on that account, Christel, do you?"
She shook her head smiling: "Those used to be lively times."