"It's worth some ten ducats—well, that's better than nothing. Don't be angry, Noémi; when you are my wife I will buy you two bracelets, each thirty ducats in weight, and with a sapphire in the middle—no, an emerald. Which do you prefer, a sapphire or an emerald?" He laughed at his sally, and as no one answered his question, he continued, "But now, Mother Therese, prepare a bed for your future son-in-law, your dear Theodor, so that he may dream sweetly of his beloved Noémi!"
"I can not give you a bed. In the next room and in the garret are our guests; you can't sleep here in our room, that would not be proper—Noémi is no longer a child. Go out and lie down on the bench."
"Oh, you hard-hearted, cruel Therese. You send me to the hard bench—me, your beloved future son-in-law!"
"Noémi, give your pillow—there, take it! And here's my coverlet. Good-night."
"Yes, if there were not that accursed great dog out there—the fierce brute will devour me."
"Don't be afraid, I will chain her up. Poor beast! she is never tied up except when you are on the island."
Frau Therese had some trouble to entice Almira out of her hole; the poor dog knew well enough what awaited her in these circumstances, and that she would now be chained up, but she was used to obedience, and allowed her mistress to fasten the chain.
But this made her all the more furious against him who was the cause of her confinement. As soon as Therese had gone back to her room, and Theodor remained alone outside, the dog began to bark madly, and danced about on the small space left free to her by the chain, now and then making a spring, to see whether she could succeed in breaking the collar or the chain, or rooting up the tree-trunk to which the chain was fastened.
But Theodor teased her again. He thought it amusing to enrage an animal which could not reach him, and foamed with fury at its impotence. He went closer, leaving only a step between himself and the point the chain permitted the dog to reach; then he began to creep toward her on all fours and make faces at her. He brayed at her like a donkey, put his tongue out, spat in her face, and imitated the dog's bark. "Bow-wow! You would like to eat me, wouldn't you? Bow-wow! There's my nose; bite it off if you can. You're a lovely dog—you horrid beast! Bow-wow! Break your chain and come wrestle with me; snap at my finger, there it is before your nose; only don't you wish you may get it?"
At the moment of her greatest fury, Almira suddenly stopped. She barked no more; she understood. It is the wise one that gives in, thought she. She stretched her head up as if to look down on that other four-legged beast in front of her, then turned and scratched as dogs do, backward, with her hind feet, whirling up dust and sand, so that the other brute got his eyes and mouth full of it, which made him beat a retreat, breaking out in the human bark—curses, to wit. But Almira retired with her chain into the hole near the elder-tree and came out no more; she ceased to bark, but a hot panting could be heard for a long time.