"Kopp! let the children alone, attend to yourself. You can keep on your nankeen coat, it is clean and good."
"My Klücking," said Pomuchelskopp, "always noble, my dear Klücking! If we owe nothing to the Pastor's family, we owe something to ourselves. And, if Malcheh and Salchen are going too, they must dress themselves up, and then we will set out."
This argument gained Pomuchelskopp the permission to array himself in his brown overcoat. He was so rejoiced at having carried his point, a thing which did not often happen, that in his gratitude he desired to confer some pleasure upon his Klücking, and make her a sharer in his own satisfaction; for no one must do Pomuchelskopp the injustice to suppose that he was overbearing in his own house,--no! there he was rather humble and depressed. He pointed, therefore, across the fields and said, "Just look, that is all ours!"
"Muchel, you point too far," said the lady shortly; "all that over yonder belongs to Pumpelhagen."
"You are right, that is all Pumpelhagen. But"--he added, and the little eyes looked greedily towards Pumpelhagen, "who knows? If God spares my life, and I sell my property in Pomerania at a good bargain, and times continue good, and the old Kammerrath dies, and his son gets into debt----"
"Yes, Muchel," interrupted his wife, and across her face flitted that derisive gleam, which was the only approach to a smile ever seen on it, "yes, just as old Strohpagel said: 'If I were ten years younger, and hadn't this lame leg, and hadn't a wife--you should see what a fellow I would be!'"
"Häuhning," said Pomuchelskopp, making a face as if he were grieved to the heart, "how can you talk so? As if I wished to be rid of you! Without the thirty thousand dollars, which your father left you, I never could have bought Gurlitz. And what a fine estate Gurlitz is! See! this is all Gurlitz!" and he pointed again over the fields.
"Yes, Kopp," said his wife, in a hard tone, "all but the Pastor's field, which you have let slip out of your fingers."
"Ah, Klücking," said Pomuchelskopp, as they left the garden, "always the Pastor's field! what can I do? See, I am an honest, straight-forward man; what can I do against such a pair of sly old fellows as Habermann and the Pastor? But the day is not over yet, Monsieur Habermann! We shall have something to say to each other yet, Herr Pastor!"
At the Pastor's house, this morning, three pretty little girls were sitting in the Frau Pastorin's neat parlor, busy as bees, their fingers sewing and their tongues chatting at the same time, and looking, amid the white linen, as fresh and red as ripe strawberries on a white plate; these were Louise Habermann and the little twins, Mining and Lining Nüssler.