"Here comes our friend Möllner," said the old man, listening. "I know his step from all others."
"Yes, Father Leonhardt, it is I," said Möllner's clear voice. "How are you all?" He drew near the quiet little group. Before him ran three or four geese, greatly terrified and in great anxiety,--but yielding not one jot of their dignity, for they never thought of turning aside; they were left in the middle of the road, when Johannes reached his friends.
"Look, Herr Professor," remarked young Leonhardt gaily, "those stupid birds are priding themselves upon having maintained their place. See with what haughty disdain they are regarding you. They evidently think that they have compelled you to turn aside for them! It is always the way. Wisdom vacates the path shared with stupidity, and the latter swells with the pride of an imagined victory."
Johannes smiled. "What puts these little moral sentiments into your head, my dear Walter? Are you about to compose a new primer for your school?"
"It really would not be a bad idea among such people as these!" said Walter, as he shook hands with Möllner.
Möllner sat down upon the bench before the house and took Käthchen upon his knee. "Would not you like, Käthchen, to have Herr Walter make you a new primer?"
"It might be a capital undertaking, Walter," remarked Herr Leonhardt. "We must not despise small opportunities, since larger ones are denied us."
"Yes, father," laughed the light-hearted young fellow, "but, if my primer is to succeed here, I must have for the letter H,
"'H stands for Hartwich, good Christians must know,
She's a terrible witch, who will work them all woe.'"
Herr Leonhardt made a sign to the thoughtless speaker, who looked in alarm at Möllner, who preserved a gloomy silence.