He threw a pitying glance at her; then he laughed shortly, and said, “Drive about in it.”
Frau Elsbeth asked no more. Her husband, turning to the upper farm-servant, expounded his plans: how he would begin peat-cutting on a large scale; cutting and pressing machines were also on the way, and to-morrow, early, work could begin. Then he gave him orders to go to the village to engage the necessary workmen. Ten men would suffice for the beginning, but he hoped soon to need as many as twenty or thirty.
Frau Elsbeth mutely shook her head, and went into the house just as the locomobile arrived before the gate. Paul never tired of looking and admiring. Behind the yellow screws and crooked handles there seemed to lie a world of mystery; the place for the fire, with the grate and ash-box beneath, seemed to him like the entrance to that fiery furnace, in which the well-known three holy men had once intoned their song of praise; and the chimney above all, standing threateningly upright, with its wreath of pine soot at its mouth, which seemed to lead down into blackness and fathomless depths!
Paul did not heed the little basket-carriage that drove behind the monster, in which sat Lob Levy, with his shaggy, reddish beard, and his merry, twinkling eyes; he did not heed the screaming of the carmen, and the exultation of his two little sisters, who danced like mad round the wheels. He stood there dazed with wonder, as if he could not understand yet what was happening around him.
When, later on, he entered the big room, he found his mother crouching in the corner of the sofa, crying.
He put his arm round her neck; but she kept him gently off, and said, “Go and look after the little ones, so that they do not get under the wheels.”
“But why do you cry, mamma?”
“You will see in time, my boy,” she said, stroking his hair. “Lob Levy is in it—you will see in time.”
Then he felt angry with his mother! When all were joyful why should she sit moping in a corner and cry? But the joy was now over for him; and when he saw Lob Levy loiter about the yard, in his long black “heel-warmer,” he would have liked most to favor Caro with a hint towards his calves.
The twins were quite beside themselves with joy. They took a cord, and crying “gee” and “whoa,” raced wildly through the garden. One of them was the locomobile, the other the horse, but each wanted to be the locomobile, because then she got father’s black hat put on for the chimney.