"Yes, what was needful, but they have plans which he shall further. Lori has passed her examination as governess, and would like to begin a boarding school here; but thrifty Emma, on the contrary, wishes to set up a boarding-house, the sisters should help partly here partly there. Then the question is how to get hold of the Doctor's capital for these mild institutions; but Euphrasia guards the Nibelungen treasure like the dragon Fafner in the legend."
The friends meanwhile had drawn near to the table, at which the Professor with his wife and her three sisters Lori, Emma and Albertine were sitting; the others had stayed behind in their new home. Reising's appearance betrayed unwonted fashion; he even wore a gay coloured neckerchief. That was Lori's taste, and at the same time a trophy of her victory, because although Euphrasia had objected and maintained that her husband must avoid everything remarkable, as it did not suit him, Lori had conquered, and he had taken a grass green and ocean blue tie from his drawer.
Reising greeted Blanden very pleasantly, as did his wife and sisters-in-law. Of all those merry and sad events at the sea-side, the ball beneath the pear-tree alone lived in their recollection.
"A glorious festival!" said the Professor, while pushing his hand through his rebellious hair, which hitherto had opposed invincible resistance to the combined attempts at beautifying it on the part of his six sisters-in-law. "By it East Prussia makes progress in the consciousness of liberty."
"You will take cold, dear brother," said Emma, "there is a cold air from the lake."
Lori, with superior decision, took up a shawl that lay upon the table, and wrapped the Professor in it. Unanimous as the two sisters were that their brother-in-law's large heritage should be diminished in their favour, yet a constant small internecine war of jealousy as to the privilege of such favours, raged between them: Lori struggled for intellectual cultivation, Emma for food and attendance. Euphrasia looked upon her sisters' loving coquetry with proud indifference; she knew that the key of the cash box lay in her hands.
"My brother is right," said Lori. "Such festivals contribute considerably to the people's education, and the people must be educated; one feels this necessity most keenly on such occasions as the present. Not only the lower orders, even the higher require education; people may say that men's student life for a time unsettles them; scorn of citizen-like customs is implanted in them; late hours, beer-drinking, smoking are acquired as noble habits of life, and to be intoxicated is considered manly and correct, perhaps because the ancient Germans, even upon their bearskins, sometimes lost their sense of sobriety with drinking mead. Thus it is with men; but the daughters of the higher classes are not much better off; more or less, they are all badly brought up. Yes, people may even maintain the same of us, although we are the daughters of a professor."
"You go too far," said Albertine, angrily, and thus broke the silence, deep as an abyss, with which until now she had celebrated the day of jubilee.
"Too far? What, have we then really learned, according to any system, any principle? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Yes, any one who gave herself the trouble, who followed her own inclinations, might attain splendid results. But that is the case even with the Bœotians! Method is everything; I shall introduce a method into my educational institution that will satisfy the most temperate minds."
Reising looked timidly at Euphrasia, who always resisted the mention of this future boarding-school most decidedly, to-day she contented herself with carelessly humming a few bars of music.