‘Your friend, sir,’ insinuated Killian, ‘would not, perhaps, care to make the interest reversible? Fritz is a good lad.’
‘Fritz is young,’ said the Prince dryly; ‘he must earn consideration, not inherit.’
‘He has long worked upon the place, sir,’ insisted Mr. Gottesheim; ‘and at my great age, for I am seventy-eight come harvest, it would be a troublesome thought to the proprietor how to fill my shoes. It would be a care spared to assure yourself of Fritz. And I believe he might be tempted by a permanency.’
‘The young man has unsettled views,’ returned Otto.
‘Possibly the purchaser—’ began Killian.
A little spot of anger burned in Otto’s cheek. ‘I am the purchaser,’ he said.
‘It was what I might have guessed,’ replied the farmer, bowing with an aged, obsequious dignity. ‘You have made an old man very happy; and I may say, indeed, that I have entertained an angel unawares. Sir, the great people of this world—and by that I mean those who are great in station—if they had only hearts like yours, how they would make the fires burn and the poor sing!’
‘I would not judge them hardly, sir,’ said Otto. ‘We all have our frailties.’
‘Truly, sir,’ said Mr. Gottesheim, with unction. ‘And by what name, sir, am I to address my generous landlord?’
The double recollection of an English traveller, whom he had received the week before at court, and of an old English rogue called Transome, whom he had known in youth, came pertinently to the Prince’s help. ‘Transome,’ he answered, ‘is my name. I am an English traveller. It is, to-day, Tuesday. On Thursday, before noon, the money shall be ready. Let us meet, if you please, in Mittwalden, at the “Morning Star.”’