She tried a feint or two to draw off his attention, but the pirate kept on his course unchecked. She showed her parson the red danger signal she had hoisted in her distress, but he seemed to look upon the whole affair as a good joke, perhaps because he was convinced that the brig was in no danger. He sat back comfortably in his sofa corner, sometimes laughing and sometimes shaking his head.--Little Mrs. Behrens lost all patience with her nephew and called him in her own mind: "A silly boy, a young rascal, and a little wretch." But when the pirate began to fire one broadside after another of honied phrases and poetical sentiments at the tiny craft, she gallantly steamed out to sea to defend it and opened her attack on the rover by throwing her grappling irons, taking him in tow and carrying him off with her in triumph: "Come, my boy, come. I want to speak to you, Fred. You may as well take your hat with you." When she had him safe in the still-room she man[oe]uvred him into a corner where he was unable to move because of the barricade of jars, tubs, &c., and then seizing a loaf of bread cut a tremendously thick slice, saying: "You must be hungry, Freddy. You have an empty stomach, sonny, and an empty stomach makes people say and do things that they had better not.--There now I've spread it with butter for you, here's the cheese, won't you have a bit--set to work, my boy, and eat a good luncheon."--Fred stood silently before her not knowing what to do; he had wished to win a heart, and instead of that he had been given a slice of bread and butter! He was about to speak, but his aunt would not allow him: "I know what you are going to say, my boy, so you needn't speak, my child. But here--just to please me--here is a bottle of beer, pray take it out to Hawermann who is sowing peas in the field below the garden. Tell him that it's some of the beer he likes so much, it comes from the mayor of Stavenhagen's brewery." While speaking she took him through the kitchen, and let him out at the back door. As he was going, she called after him through a chink in the doorway: "You won't be able to come and see us for a long time as you've begun to sow the corn and will of course have a great deal to do--no, no, my boy, it can't be helped--but when you come back, in autumn perhaps, Louisa will be seventeen, and you must give up talking such childish nonsense to her as you've been doing to-day, she'll be too old for such folly then. Good-bye now, sonny, eat your bread and butter." Then she shut the door leaving Fred outside with a great slice of bread in one hand, and a bottle of beer in the other.