Pümpelhagen has belonged to the von Rambow family; you can't expect to get it away from them at a moment's notice. But now--hush! I hear David coming, and he must not know what we have been talking about. You understand, he is to know of nothing but that you like taking up good bills." When David entered the room he saw before him a couple of happy faces; Pomuchelskopp was laughing as if the attorney had been making a good joke, and the attorney was laughing as if Pomuchelskopp had been telling an amusing story. But David was not half so stupid as he looked at that moment, he knew that he had been sent out of the way, and that his colleagues were laughing at something very different from a joke.--"They have _their_ secrets," he said to himself, "and I have _mine_."--So he seated himself at the opposite side of the table to Pomuchelskopp, and said with the most stupidly unconcerned expression in the world, such as only a Jewish rogue can put on: "I've seen it."--"Well?" asked Pomuchelskopp.--"Hm!" said David, shrugging his shoulders, "you say that it has been washed. Well--perhaps it has."--"What, don't you believe me? Isn't it as white as swan's-down?"--"Humph! If you ever saw swan's-down like it, perhaps it may be like swan's-down."--"What is your offer?"--"Look here! We had a better from Löwenthal in Hamburg--the great house of Löwenthal in Hamburg--the price per stone is two pounds three and sixpence."--"Yes, I know all that; you always get them to write you some scoundrelly nonsense of that kind."--"A house like that of Löwenthal never advises one of anything that is not true."--"Come, come," interrupted the attorney, "this isn't business, it's quarrelling. Suppose you send for a couple of bottles of wine, Pomuchelskopp, and then you'll both manage to strike a bargain more easily."--Mr. Slus'uhr insisted on his plan being acceded to, and the squire had to obey; he rang the bell, and when Stina Dorothy came in, he said politely and confidentially--for he was always polite to the members of his own household, above all to the women, from his Henny down to the nursery-maid:--"Bring two bottles of wine, Dorothy; the blue seal you know."