"How do you know that?"
"Well, mother," said Rudolph, hesitating a little, "I was over in our rye this morning, near the Gurlitz boundary, and I ran over to the parsonage a minute; he was there, and he will come to-morrow."
"Rudolph, you are not to go running over there so, I will not have it; when I go with you on Sundays, that is another thing. There you go chattering and chattering, and putting all sorts of nonsense about weddings and marriage into Mining's head, and nothing can come of it yet."
"Eh, mother, if we don't get married before long, we shall both be old and cold."
"Rudolph," said Frau Nüssler, as she left the room, "what is to become, then, of Jochen and me? We are still young, and able to work, shall we be laid on the shelf?"
"Well," said Rudolph to himself, when she had gone out, "you are not so very young, after all. These old people can give themselves no rest! The old man might be willing, but the old woman would work three young ones dead. Well, Bräsig is coming to-morrow; I will have Bräsig on my side."
And Bräsig came. "Good morning! Sit still, Jochen! Well, have you had a little rebellion here, already?"
"Eh!" said Jochen, smoking furiously, "what shall I do about it, Bauschan?" for he must ask Bauschan, since Bräsig was already out of the room, and calling after Frau Nüssler.
"Good gracious, Bräsig!" said she, drying her hands on her apron, for she had washed them hastily, not wishing to offer him a pair of doughy hands, for she had just been kneading bread, "why do you never come near us, and in these dreadful times? How is my brother Karl?"
"'Bonus!' as the Herr Advocate Rein says, or 'bong' as the greyhound says, or he is doing well, as I say; only that he is always thinking of the destruction of his honest name, and the separation of his little Louise from Franz, and these inward wounds injure him, in every relation, so that he will have nothing to do with the Reformverein, and Parliament, and political matters."