fashionable
resort, leaving a heavenly peace behind them. Elsie attracts
extraordinary attention with her clothes, and is too stupid to
understand that she is being ridiculed to her face. At the same time her
hundred thousand francs dowry are not to be sneezed at, and these lure a
bird of prey in the shape of a cotton-dealer, who takes mother and
daughter off for a drive, and, making good use of his opportunity,
carries his point by storm. Elsie is in the seventh heaven, her mother
not quite so overjoyed.]

CHAPTER XXII

OF INWARD CONFLICTS, WHICH ARE TO BE ENDED BY AN ENGAGEMENT

[Joggeli will not hear to the affair, fearing to lose Uli. Freneli
chides Elsie for breaking her promise to Uli, and the latter is at first
completely stunned, overwhelmed with chagrin, rage, and disappointment.
He is only saved from some act of rash folly by Freneli, who counsels
him to put the mockers off the track by pretending utter indifference.
The cotton-dealer loses no time in coming in state to secure his prize;
Joggeli is quite overcome by his smooth tongue, but requests a fortnight
for deliberation with his son and others.]

CHAPTER XXIII

OF SUBSEQUENT EMBARRASSMENTS WHICH RESULT FROM THE ENGAGEMENT

[Uli's behavior staggers the gossips, but his assumed indifference soon
becomes genuine; none the less, he is resolved to give up his place at
Christmas. Johannes and Trinette are both beside themselves; the reports
about the prospective son-in-law are conflicting and doubtful. But Elsie
is so wild, and the cotton-dealer so persuasive, that the parents
finally give reluctant consent to the marriage. Elsie constantly accuses
Freneli of flirting with her husband, who is not insensible to Freneli's
beauty and charm; she resolves to leave Slough Farm also, since Elsie is
no longer to be controlled and Freneli is subjected to her unbridled
temper. The old mistress is in utter consternation at the imminent loss
of her two best helpers, Uli and Freneli; and new sorrow comes to her
through the son-in-law, who guts the house of its stores on pretense of
putting the money out at interest, and keeps a hawk's eye on all her
housekeeping.]

CHAPTER XXIV

OF ANOTHER TRIP, WHICH DOES NOT DESTROY A CALCULATION, BUT UNEXPECTEDLY
CONCLUDES ONE

ALL this weighed on the good mother's mind, and when she reflected that
Uli and Freneli would both leave besides, that her son-in-law would then
get the reins wholly into his ha