"Children," said the little, round Frau Pastorin, as she now and then looked in from the kitchen, "you cannot think what a pleasure it is to one in my old age, when I put away my clean linen in the linen-trunk, and think with every piece when it was spun and when it was sewed! And how prudent it makes one, to know for oneself how much pains it has cost! Mining, Mining, your seam is crooked! Good heavens, Louise! I believe you are looking off half the time, yet you sew right along, and get no knots in your thread. But now I must go and take up the potatoes, for my Pastor will be here soon," and with that she ran out of the door, looking back, however, to say, "Mining and Lining, you must stay here to dinner to-day!" And so she flew from the kitchen to the parlor, and from the parlor back to the kitchen, like the pendulum of a clock, and kept everything in running order.
But how came Lining and Mining Nüssler to be in the Frau Pastorin's sewing-school? It happened in this way.
When the little twins had got so far that they could speak the "r" plainly, and no longer played in the sand, and ran after Frau Nüssler all day long, saying, "Mother, what shall we do now?" then Frau Nüssler said to young Jochen that it was high time the children went to school; they must have a governess. Jochen had no objections, and his brother-in-law, the Rector Baldrian, undertook the task of procuring one. When she had been six months at Rexow, Frau Nüssler said she was a cross old thing, she scolded the little girls from morning to night and made them so skittish that they did not know how to behave; she must go. Thereupon Kaufman Kurz looked up another; and one day, when nobody in Rexow dreamed of impending evil, a sort of grenadier walked in at the door, with heavy black eyebrows, and sallow complexion, and with spectacles on her nose, and announced herself as the new "governess." She began to talk French to the little twins, and as she observed that the poor little creatures were so ignorant that they could not understand her in the least, she turned, in the same language, to young Jochen. Such a thing had never happened to young Jochen in his life; he let his pipe fall from his mouth, and as they were drinking coffee he said, in order to say something, "Mother, ask the new school-ma'am to take another cup."
This one was a "governess" over the whole house, and Frau Nüssler stood it bravely for a while; but finally she said, "Stop! This won't do; if anybody is to command here it is I, for I am the nearest, as Frau Pastorin says;" and she gave the grenadier her marching orders. Then uncle Bräsig offered his assistance, and engaged a teacher,--"A smart one," he said, "always in good spirits, and she can play you dead on the harpsichord." He was right; one evening in the winter, there arrived at Rexow a little blue-cheeked, hump-backed body, who, after the first ten minutes, attacked the new piano, which Jochen had bought at auction, and belaboured it as if she were threshing wheat. When she had gone to bed, young Jochen opened the piano, and when he saw that three strings were broken, he shut it up again, and said, "Yes, what shall we do about it?"
There were lively times in the house now; the girl-governess ran and romped with the little girls, until Frau Nüssler came to the conclusion that her oldest, Lining, had really more sense than the mamselle. She wished to inform herself how the mamselle managed the children in school-hours; she requested, therefore, to be shown a plan of their studies, and the next day Lining brought her a great sheet of paper with all the "branches" marked out. There was German and French, Orthography and Geography, and Religion, and Biblical History, and other History, and also Biblical Natural History, and then to conclude with, music, and music, and music.
"Eh!" said Frau Nüssler to Jochen, "she may teach them all the music she wants to, for all me, if the religion is only of the right sort. What do you say, Jochen?"
"Yes," said Jochen, "it is all as true as leather!"
Well, she might have stayed, if Lining had not let out, accidentally, that mamselle played jack-stones with them in the Biblical History; and as Frau Nüssler heard one day, during the "Religion" hour, such a romping in the school-room that she opened the door suddenly, to see what kind of religion was going on, behold! Mamselle was playing "Cuckoo" with the children. Madam Nüssler could not approve of this lively sort of religion, so Mamselle "Hop-on-the-hill" hopped after the grenadier.
It was very inconvenient, because it was now the middle of the fourth quarter, and if Frau Nüssler complained that the children were running wild, Jochen only said; "Yes, what shall I do about it?" But he began to study the Rostock "Times" with uncommon interest; and one day he laid aside the "Times," and ordered Christian to get out the "phantom." His good wife was considerably astonished, for she had no idea what he was thinking of; but as she looked at the pipe side of his face, and noticed that his mouth was stretched wider than usual, which represented a friendly smile, she gave herself no more anxiety, and said, "Let him go! He has something good in his head."
After three days Jochen returned with an elderly, almost transparent-looking lady, and it went through the whole region like a running fire: "Only think! young Jochen has got a governess himself."