"You are right, neighbor," said the Pastor, "it is very important that girls should be well trained in housekeeping."
"So I say, Herr Pastor. To think of that poor little Frau Amtmann! She has the best will in the world, but knows nothing at all. She asked questions that my children could answer at seven years of age, whether the swine were milked, and how the little chickens cut open the shell. And Louise will not be a governess either, Herr Pastor?"
"No, not with our consent, and Habermann is of the same opinion; she shall learn housekeeping. Regina is getting a little too lazy, and--isn't it so?" sitting down by his wife on the sofa, and putting his arm about her,--"a little too old also, she will be glad of a young assistant, and could not bear to be parted from her Louise."
"You mean you could not bear it, Pastor! Really, I feel myself quite set aside; from morning to night, it is, 'Louise, get this!' and 'Louise, bring me that!'"
"Well, we will not quarrel, I should miss the child sorely, if she were away."
Meanwhile, Habermann had returned, with Franz and the children, and had met young Jochen wandering about in a state of unusual agitation. He ran to Mining, took her in his arms and kissed her, saying, "Mining, I can do nothing to prevent it;" and when Habermann asked what was the matter, he said only: "Brother-in-law, what must be, must." And as they took their departure from the parsonage, and he sat in the carriage, he felt as if he were carrying a lamb to the slaughter, and although his wife explained the whole matter fully, and told him Mining should never be a governess, the whole thing had made such a deep impression upon him, that he ever afterward looked upon Mining as an unhappy maiden, and treated her accordingly. She must always sit next him at the table, and, he gave her the best of everything, as if every meal were her last.
CHAPTER XII.
So now, for the first time, the future of the little maidens was marked out, so far, that is, as one human being can arrange the course of life for another; but destiny is a strange fellow for a godfather, and he interferes often in the most quiet and reasonable plans that old, serious, white-haired people can think out, with some stupid trick that nobody could dream of. The worst of this plan-making is, that generally the very wisest prove the stupidest in the end, because the good, old, white-haired people think merely of their own white heads, and do not take into account the black ones which they had in their youth.
It had never seriously occurred to the old Herr Pastor that his foster-child might be taken off his hands by a young man; and the Frau Pastorin, who, after the fashion of women, had thought much and often upon this chapter in the woman's catechism, had always comforted herself with the reflection that Louise was not acquainted with any young men; since, on account of his nobility, she did not consider Franz as a young man, and Fritz, with his stupid jokes and her own motherly authority over him, seemed like a little, undeveloped boy. But her eyes were to be opened, she was to discover that a young, pretty maiden, even if she is hid in a parsonage, will attract young people as surely as a flower the butterflies. The gay-colored caterpillar, which had crept across her path so often to her annoyance, had popped out of its chrysalis, a gorgeous, yellow, swallow-tailed butterfly, which fluttered around the flower in her garden, and settled upon it, and devoted himself to it, in a way which would have amused her extremely, if the butterfly had not been her sister's son, and the flower Louise Habermann.
Fritz came to Gurlitz, a few days after the confirmation, with a great and righteous hatred in his heart, against the whole race of womankind.