end and playmate? He looked like a right profligate
good-for-nothing. And to have a servant take up her scolding as an
unpardonable offence, and persist in quitting her place, just when she
had learnt all her work, and was so useful in the household--so
useful that the Fraeulein could never put up with any fresh, stupid
house-maiden, but, sooner than take the trouble of teaching the new
servant where everything was, and how to give out the stores if she was
busy, she would go back to Worms. For, after all, housekeeping for a
brother was thankless work; there was no satisfying men; and Heppenheim
was but a poor ignorant village compared to Worms.

She must have spoken to her brother about her intention of leaving him,
and returning to her former home; indeed a feeling of coolness had
evidently grown up between the brother and sister during these latter
days. When one evening Herr Mueller brought in his pipe, and, as his
custom had sometimes been, sat down by my stove to smoke, he looked
gloomy and annoyed. I let him puff away, and take his own time. At
length he began,--

"I have rid the village of him at last. I could not bear to have him
here disgracing Thekla with speaking to her whenever she went to the
vineyard or the fountain. I don't believe she likes him a bit."

"No more do I," I said. He turned on me.

"Then why did she speak to him at all? Why cannot she like an honest man
who likes her? Why is she so bent on going home to Altenahr?"

"She speaks to him because she has known him from a child, and has a
faithful pity for one whom she has known so innocent, and who is now so
lost in all good men's regard. As for not liking an honest man--(though
I may have my own opinion about that)--liking goes by fancy, as we say
in English; and Altenahr is her home; her father's house is at Altenahr,
as you know."

"I wonder if he will go there," quoth Herr Mueller, after two or three
more puffs. "He was fast at the 'Adler;' he could not pay his score, so
he kept on staying here, saying that he should receive a letter from a
friend with money in a day or two; lying in wait, too, for Thekla, who
is well-known and respected all through Heppenheim: so his being an old
friend of hers made him have a kind of standing. I went in this morning
and paid his score, on condition that he left the place this day; and he
left the village as merrily as a cricket, caring no more for Thekla than
for the Kaiser who built our church: for