LITMIR.BIZ

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be introduced by herself. She was too great a potentate to have advice thrust upon her uninvited.

      A few days after this she asked Malchen whether Schlessen was ever coming out to the Brunnenthal again. This was almost tantamount to an order for his presence. “He will come directly, mother, if you want to see him,” said Malchen. The Frau would do no more than grunt in answer to this. It was too much to expect that she should say positively that he must come. But Malchen understood her, and sent the necessary word to Innsbruck.

      On the following day Schlessen was at the Peacock, and took a walk up to the waterfall with Malchen before he saw the Frau. “She won’t ruin herself,” said Fritz. “It would take a great deal to ruin her. What she is losing in the house she is making up in the forests and in the land.”

      “Then it won’t matter if it does go on like this?”

      “It does matter because it makes her so fierce and unhappy, and because the more she is knocked about the more obstinate she will get. She has only to say the word, and all would be right to-morrow.”

      “What word?” asked Malchen.

      “Just to acknowledge that everything has got to be twenty-five per cent. dearer than it was twenty-five years ago.”

      “But she does not like paying more, Fritz. That’s just the thing.”

      “What does it matter what she pays?”

      “I should think it mattered a great deal.”

      “Not in the least. What does matter is whether she makes a profit out of the money she spends. Florins and zwansigers are but names. What you can manage to eat, and drink, and wear, and what sort of a house you can live in, and whether you can get other people to do for you what you don’t like to do yourself—that is what you have got to look after.”

      “But, Fritz;—money is money.”

      “Just so; but it is no more than money. If she could find out suddenly that what she has been thinking was a zwansiger was in truth only half a zwansiger, then she would not mind paying two where she had hitherto paid one, and would charge two where she now charges one—as a matter of course. That’s about the truth.”

      “But a zwansiger is a zwansiger.”

      “No;—not in her sense. A zwansiger now is not much more than half what it used to be. If the change had come all at once she could have understood it better.”

      “But why is it changed?”

      Here Schlessen scratched his head. He was not quite sure that he knew, and felt himself unable to explain clearly what he himself only conjectured dimly. “At any rate it is so. That’s what she has got to be made to understand, or else she must give it up and go and live quietly in private. It’ll come to that, that she won’t have a servant about the place if she goes on like this. Her own grandfather and grandmother were very good sort of people, but it is useless to try and live like them. You might just as well go back further, and give up knives and forks and cups and saucers.”

      Such was the wisdom of Herr Schlessen; and when he had spoken it he was ready to go back from the waterfall, near which they were seated, to the house. But Malchen thought that there was another subject as to which he ought to have something to say to her. “It is all very bad for us;—isn’t it, Fritz?”

      “It will come right in time, my darling.”

      “Your darling! I don’t think you care for me a bit.” As she spoke she moved herself a little further away from him. “If you did, you would not take it all so easily.”

      “What can I do, Malchen?” She did not quite know what he could do, but she was sure that when her lover, after a month’s absence, got an opportunity of sitting with her by a waterfall, he should not confine his conversation to a discussion on the value of zwansigers.

      “You never seem to think about anything except money now.”

      “That is very unfair, Malchen. It was you asked me, and so I endeavoured to explain it.”

      “If you have said all that you’ve got to say, I suppose we may go back again.”

      “Of course, Malchen, I wish she’d settle what she means to do about you. We have been engaged long enough.”

      “Perhaps you’d like to break it off.”

      “You never knew me break off anything yet.” That was true. She did know him to be a man of a constant, if not of an enthusiastic temperament. And now, as he helped her up from off the rock, and contrived to snatch a kiss in the process, she was restored to her good humour.

      “What’s the good of that?” she said, thumping him, but not with much violence. “I did speak to mother a little while ago, and asked her what she meant to do.”

      “Was she angry?”

      “No;—not angry; but she said that everything must remain as it is till after the season. Oh, Fritz! I hope it won’t go on for another winter. I suppose she has got the money.”

      “Oh, yes; she has got it; but, as I’ve told you before, people who have got money do not like to part with it.” Then they returned to the house; and Malchen, thinking of it all, felt reassured as to her lover’s constancy, but was more than ever certain that, though it might be for five years, he would never marry her till the mitgift had been arranged.

      Shortly afterwards he was summoned into the Frau’s private room, and there had an interview with her alone. But it was very short; and, as he afterwards explained to Malchen, she gave him no opportunity of proffering any advice. She had asked him nothing about prices, and had made no allusion whatever to her troubles with her neighbours. She said not a word about the butcher, either at Innsbruck or at Brixen, although they were both at this moment very much on her mind. Nor did she tell him anything of the wickedness of Anton, nor of the ingratitude of Seppel. She had simply wanted so many hundred florins—for a purpose, as she said—and had asked him how she might get them with the least inconvenience. Hitherto the money coming in, which had always gone into her own hands, had sufficed for her expenditure, unless when some new building was required. But now a considerable sum was necessary. She simply communicated her desire, and said nothing of the purpose for which it was wanted. The lawyer told her that she could have the money very easily—at a day’s notice, and without any peculiar damage to her circumstances. With that the interview was over, and Schlessen was allowed to return to his lady love—or to the amusements of the Peacock generally.

      “What did she want of you?” asked Peter.

      “Only a question about business.”

      “I suppose it was about business. But what is she going to do?”

      “You ought to know that, I should think. At any rate, she told me nothing.”

      “It is getting very bad here,” said Peter, with a peculiarly gloomy countenance. “I don’t know where we are to get anything soon. We have not milk enough, and half the time the visitors can’t have eggs if they want them. And as for fowls, they have to be bought for double what we used to give. I wonder the folk here put up with it without grumbling.”

      “It’ll come right after this season.”

      “Such a name as the place is getting!” said Peter. “And then I sometimes think it will drive her distracted. I told her yesterday we must buy more cows—and, oh, she did look at me!”

CHAPTER VI.

       HOFF THE BUTCHER.

       Table of Contents

      The lawyer returned to town, and on the next day the money was sent out to the Brunnenthal. Frau Frohmann had not winced when she demanded the sum needed, nor had she shown by any

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