Then I could see she wanted a change of subject, and had her eye out for a pretext. She seemed to find it, and said, »There, you'd better run along and get at your embroidery; if you haven't finished it in thirty days –«

»It happens that it's already finished!« cried Lilly, without trying to conceal how vain she was about it.

»Finished? When?«

»Day before yesterday.«

»The idea! Very well, you can pull it all out and do it over again. And next time, do it right.«

»It is done right – I'll bring it and you can see for yourself,« and she ran and brought it.

It was a little picture, wrought in threads of silk and gold and silver. My mother was astonished, and said –

»Dear me, it is finer than the original – much finer. It is easily forty days' work. How is it that it took you ten days to merely start it, and only one day to complete it? And certainly the workmanship is beyond praise for grace and beauty and perfection. Dear, dear, the exquisite delicacy of it! It's just a dream!«

»It didn't take a day, it took only twenty minutes. He did it.«

My mother was astonished again, and asked dozens of questions, and got all the particulars, and grew more and more astonished all the time. Then she examined the work in this and that and the other light, hanging it on the wall, on a chair, spreading it on the table, her eyes speaking her wondering and worshiping delight in it, and her lips muttering all the time, »Marvelous creature, amazing creature,« and Lilly stood drinking it all in, happy and proud as a person could be.

»Well,« said mother at last, »it strikes a body dumb, I must say. He is a most singular creature, take him how you will. Embroiders like an angel, and admires rattlesnakes; a most unaccountable mixture in the matter of tastes. With his gifts he will get along. He doesn't need any better profession than this, and I hope he will stick to it, and make a name for himself. That is his intention, isn't it?«

»No,« said my sister, »he looks higher.«

»Higher? What is he going to be?«

»An author.«

»Author of what?«

»When he has finished his education at Heidelberg, he is going to write the history of the Roman jurisprudence and codify the Roman laws.«

»That kitten?«

»He is not a kitten, mamma, and it isn't right for you to call him such names.«

»Child, then – I'm not particular. But the bare idea of it – eight weeks old, so to speak, and already planning a flight like that; it does seem to me to smack of self-conceit. But no matter, it's no affair of mine, but I know one thing: if he were my child I would see to it that he stuck to his embroidery, that I would. There's the makings of a man in him if he had the right kind of a mother. Poor thing, it is a shame that he has been allowed to grow up in this helter-skelter fashion. His mother was a Pole, probably; I never did think much of those Poles.«

She had probably never had an opinion about the Poles before, but she was in the humor to hit somebody a thump and the Poles happened to turn up in her head just in time to be useful.

 

There was one very noticeable thing: in all this conversation the name of young Joseph Fuchs the brewer's son and heir was not mentioned once. It was another instance of the fact that wherever Satan came people dropped other interests out of their minds for the time and they could not seem to think of anything but him. It was the same now. Apparently no one had thought of Joseph Fuchs, not even my father; yet my father was a steady-going practical man, and a judge. This was strange, for Joseph was the best catch in the region, and was courting my sister, apparently with her approval, and certainly with the approval of papa and mamma. And yet all of a sudden comes this revolution, and my mother is dazzled, and turned topsy-turvy, and sets herself to contemplating Satan as a possible son-in-law, just as if there was no impropriety about it and nothing in the way; and if papa was surprised at it or dissatisfied, he gave no sign of it. It was Satan's influence; it had put the family under an enchantment. Not purposely, of course; for these people belonged to the human race and it would not have occurred to him to interest himself in their small affairs – unasked – one way or the other; either to help them or to hurt them. The villagers, high and low, were all bugs to him, and by his nature he seemed unable to take a bug seriously.

Joseph Fuchs was twenty-one and a good enough young fellow. He wouldn't ever be likely to set the river on fire, but that was nothing – there was plenty of company of this calibre, he was with the majority. He took an innocent pleasure in his clothes and in his father's riches, but that was natural enough in one whose people had been poor no long time back; and he was likely to take a seat which commanded a mirror if it came handy, but nobody minded it, since it did him good and harmed no one. These were the outside tinselings of his character, but there was gold back of them; he was honest and clean and true, and had warm affections and deep feelings.

Just as mamma had finished her slat at the Poles, Joseph came in.