When at length I learned to make a copy of the façade which resembled the original he was pleased.
"There, you see what you can do! Now, if you choose, we shall soon get on," and he gave me a lesson.
"Make a plan of this house, showing the arrangement of the rooms, the places of the doors and windows, and the rest. I shall not show you how. You must do it by yourself."
I went to the kitchen and debated. How was I to do it? But at this point my studies in the art of drawing came to a standstill.
The old mistress came to me and said spitefully:
"So you want to draw?"
Seizing me by the hair, she bumped my head on the table so hard that my nose and lips were bruised. Then she darted upon and tore up the paper, swept the instruments from the table, and with her hands on her hips said triumphantly:
"That was more than I could stand. Is an outsider to do the work while his only brother, his own flesh and blood, goes elsewhere?"
The master came running in, his wife rushed after him, and a wild scene began. All three flew at one another, spitting and howling, and it ended in the women weeping, and the master saying to me:
"You will have to give up the idea for a time, and not learn. You can see for yourself what comes of it!"