"That is true," said Kegel shouldering his spade, and going off with Flegel, "it wouldn't help, especially towards filling the children's mouths, yet I might help myself by means of it."
People say, and it is true, that praise from the mouth of a child, or the humblest person, is pleasing to the wisest and most distinguished; but it is just as true that a hard judgment, from the same insignificant source, is painful, and especially painful when it concerns one whom we hold dear. And what had happened? It was only the gossip of laborers, such as often occurs among ignorant people; but the smile had gone from the young wife's eyes, and a look of vexation found place there. Her husband's insight, and his good will to carry out what he had promised in his speech, were called in question, and it all came from this, that he had not grown up to the business he had undertaken.
She was out of humor, when she came in to supper, and he was gay, so that their moods were discordant.
"So, dear Frida," said he, "now we are comfortably settled, I think it is time for us to make our visits in the neighborhood."
"Yes, Axel, but to whom?"
"Well, I think first our nearest neighbors."
"Our Pastor, first of all."
"Why yes, there, too,--later."
"Who else is there, in the neighborhood?" asked the young wife, reckoning over as if thinking aloud, "the landlord Pomuchelskopp, and the pächter[[3]] Nüssler."
"Dear Frida," said Axel, looking more serious, "you must be jesting about the pächter Nüssler, we can have no intercourse with pächter people."