"So?" asked Bräsig, again. "Did you ever have three sweethearts at once? I did, sir; three acknowledged sweethearts, and do I know about such matters? But you are such a sly old rascal, fishing my tench out of the Black Pool, on the sly; and fishing my little Mining, before my very eyes, out of the arbor. Come, leave him alone, Mining! he shall have nothing to do with you."
"Ah, Uncle Bräsig," begged Mining so artlessly, "be good to us, we love each other so much."
"Well, never mind Mining, you are my little goddaughter; though that is all over now."
"No, Herr Inspector!" cried Rudolph,--laying his hand on the old man's shoulder, "no, dear, good Uncle Bräsig, that is not over, that shall last as long as we live. I will be a farmer, and if I have the prospect of calling Mining my wife, and"--he was cunning enough to add--"and you will give me your valuable advice, the devil must be in it, if I cannot make a good one."
"A confounded rascal!" said Bräsig to himself, adding, aloud, "Yes, you will be such a Latin farmer as Pistorius, and Prætorius, and Trebonius, and you will sit on the bank of the ditch and read that fellow's book, with the long title, about oxygen and carbonic acid gas, and organisms, while the cursed farmboys are strewing manure, behind your back, in lumps as big as your hat-crown. Oh, I know you! I never knew but one man who had been to the great schools, and was worth anything afterward, and that was the young Herr yon Rambow, who was with Habermann."
"Ah, Uncle Bräsig," said Mining, lifting her head, suddenly, and stroking the old man's cheeks, "what Franz can do, Rudolph can do also."
"No, Mining, that he can not! And why? Because he is a greyhound, and the other is a decided character!"
"Uncle Bräsig," said Rudolph, "you are thinking of that stupid trick of mine, about the sermon; but Gottlieb had teased me so with his zeal for proselyting, I must play some little joke on him."
"Ha, ha!" laughed Bräsig, "well, why not, it amused me, it amused me very much. So he wanted to convert you too, from fishing, perhaps? Oh, he has been trying to convert somebody here, this afternoon, but Lining ran away from him; however, that is all right."
"With Lining and Gottlieb?" asked Mining anxiously, "and have you listened to that, too?"