"Indeed; so you have already disposed of my apple-trees!"
"Plum-tree wood need not fear comparison with the best teak."
"And those too you would cut down and sell to Signor Scaramelli?" asked Frau Therese, quietly.
"We shall get a mint of money for them; at least ten gulden for each tree. Signor Scaramelli has given me carte blanche. He has left me free to make a contract with you. I have it in my pocket; you have only to sign and our fortune is made. And when once the useless trees here are cut down, we will not stay here, but go and live in Trieste. We will plant the whole island with 'Prunus mehaleb'—you know they make Turkish pipe-stems from it. This tree requires no care; we need only keep one man here; he would sell the yearly crop of tubular stems to the merchants, and we should receive five hundred ducats for every rood—for ten roods five thousand ducats."
Timar could not suppress a smile. Speculations of such rashness had not occurred even to him.
"Well, what is there to laugh at?" Theodor said, in a lordly manner. "I know all about these things."
"And I understand, too," said Therese, "what you want. As often as my unlucky star brings you here, you appear like a bird of prey, and I may be sure you have some malicious scheme against me. You know that you will not find any money with me, but you help yourself. Once before you came with a boat and carried off what we had saved for our own use, and turned it into money. Now you are no longer satisfied with the fruit of which you took tithes more jealously than any usurious pasha. You want to sell the trees, too, over my head—those trees, my treasures, my only friends in the world, which I have planted and nurtured, which keep me, and under which I can rest. Fy! for shame! to tell me such stories of getting money for these trees, to build ships of them. For certain, you would only cut them down to sell them for a trifle to the nearest charcoal-burner—that is your splendid plan. Who are you going to take in? Not me, who know your cunning. I tell you, have done with your foolish tricks, or you may yet learn what is the use of Turkish pipe-stems!"
"No, no, Mamma Therese, I am not thinking of joking; you may be sure I did not come here for nothing: remember what day it is. It is my fête-day, and the day of my little darling Noémi's birth. You know my poor father and hers betrothed us to each other when we were little; they settled that as soon as Noémi was seventeen we should be united. I should have come from the ends of the earth for such a day as this. Here I am, with all the warmth of my loving heart; but people can not live on love alone. It is true I get good pay from Signor Scaramelli, but that goes to the splendid furniture of my house in Trieste. You must give me something with Noémi, so that she may make an appearance consistent with her rank. The bride can not enter the bridegroom's house with empty hands; she is your only daughter, and has a right to require of you that you should provide for her handsomely."
Noémi had sat down sulkily in a corner of the room, and remained with her back to the company and her head against the wall.
"Yes," continued Theodor. "You must give Noémi a dowry. Do not be so selfish. Keep half your trees, for all I care, and leave the other half to me; where and how I sell them is my affair. Give Noémi the nut-trees for a dowry: for those I have, really, a certain purchaser."