kept the keys of the strong box, so of course it lay in her power to
stop his business-travelling, and she did. More fool she! for it could
not tend to improve his temper, you know; and at last, when a letter
came--was it a letter, or the porter?--to say that your mother was ill
and dying, and past recovery, you can imagine that the governor was not
disposed to stand on ceremony. He started off alone, and did not come
back for three weeks and more; he had not written either--what could he
have written about her illness to his wife? Of course, the worst news
of the one, were the best to the other. However, he did come back at
last; and she might have lived in peace now that the other woman was
dead and buried; only she couldn't. And there was the greatest row
of all when one day he came home and surprised her with a little
present--orphan or foundling, or whatever he was pleased to call
you,--she might be as fractious as she would, the child was there, and
there was nothing to be done but to be cruel to it.

"And this she honestly did, to her heart's content, as you know best
yourself. The governor was forced to let two and two make five; he was
seldom at home, and you were a soft chap then, it seems, as you are
now, and you made no resistance, nor ever even complained of her. At
last the old porter could stand the thing no longer; and so he spoke
up, and told her it was a shame, and not the poor brat's fault if his
mother had pleased his father better than such a vixen could. Of course
she made the house too hot to hold him, and he said he felt glad to go,
for he could not bear to see a child so knocked about.

"It appears the Meister felt the same, and so he wrote to his
sister-in-law to come and stay with them. His wife was ill with spite
and rage, and things in the house went topsy-turvy. Well, and so our
adorable Helen came, and what she did, I need not tell you. So there it
is; and it is a special satisfaction to me"--and he gave a sneering
laugh--"that I got hold of Johann, and warmed him with a bottle of
Bordeaux, till he let the cat out of the bag. It was a fair trick to
play to that old screw.

"You can act upon it as you please; but I know, if I stood in your
shoes, I should not let myself be treated like a fatherless beggar, and
fed on charity. I would speak up and take another tone. He should send
me to travel, I know; with something in my pockets to chink as I went
along, to do or to leave undone, what