"Very well. You are right, my child.--Remember, you are my only one now, for where are Karl and Joe? Ah! merciful heaven!--But I only said, don't throw yourself away; that was all I said.--And, Mother, about the money, think of what the old Herr Amtshauptmann said. 'Miller Voss, I will not forget you!'--But the Frenchman, where is he? Donnerwetter! where's the Frenchman? He was lying in the straw. Friedrich must know," and he threw up the window and shouted: "Friedrich, Friedrich, don't you hear me?"
Friedrich heard him well enough, but he winked to himself and said: "Yes, yes, cry away as long as you like. Why should I go and blurt out what the Miller's wife can see for herself plainly enough? I'm not going to burn my fingers." So saying he fastened up the Frenchman's horse and took off the saddle, and as he took down the valise he said: "The Devil, isn't this heavy!" and laid it in the oat bin, gave his horses their last feed, lay down on his bed, and slept as if nothing had happened that day.
As the Miller was beginning to fume because Friedrich did not come, his wife said: "Father, never mind him; you are tired and wearied with the jolting of the waggon--come to bed; Fieka shall warm a little beer for you to drive out the night air."
"Mother," he answered, "you're right as usual, I am dreadfully tired, for money business is so wearying. Well, it's in order now--as good as in order at least--for the Herr Amtshauptmann said: 'Miller Voss, I shall not forget you.' I must be in again at Stemhagen early to-morrow morning."
So saying, he went to bed, and was asleep and snoring in five minutes.
Mother and daughter sat up a while longer, Fieka lost in thought and knitting away rapidly. "Fieka, you are industrious," said her mother at last; "and I don't fold my hands and lay them in my lap either; and Father has worked and done what he could all his life. But what is the use of it all? The bad times come and what the French have left, the Jews and lawyers take; the day after to-morrow we must pay Itzig five hundred thalers, and we haven't a shilling."
"But Father speaks as if it were all right now?"
"Don't trust what he says this evening; a red sky in the morning and a red sky in the evening are very different things; but he was right about one thing this evening; if you had only accepted the Malchin Merchant!"
"Mother dear," said Fieka and laid her hand gently in her mother's and looked up into her face, "He was not the right one."
"Few people are able to marry exactly as they would like now-a-days, daughter; there is always something. The Merchant is well off and if your father and I knew that you were well provided for, it would take a great stone off our hearts."