labourers, who saw me in the distance on the path leading to Gürlitz church, call out: 'Good-morning, reverend Sir' when I was coming here in the kindness of my heart to help you out of your family difficulties?"--"Bräsig," said young Joseph, "I swear ....."--"Swear not at all, young Joseph, for you will go to the bad place if you do. Do you call it a family council when the kümmel is lying in a pool on the floor, and I have to go about in the parson's clothes?"--"Bräsig, Bräsig," said Mrs. Nüssler, who hardly recognised the friend of her youth in the angry little man, and who had been busily engaged in picking up the bits of broken glass, and straightening the table-cloth, &c., "that's a small matter. See now, I've got everything neat and tidy again."--Bräsig could not keep up his anger when Mrs. Nüssler spoke so kindly to him, so he merely growled out in a low voice: "Hang it, young Joseph, I used to hope that you'd grow wiser in time and cease to need leading strings, but what's bred in the bone comes out in the blood! Well now, tell me what's the matter?" "Yes," said Mrs. Nüssler ...... "Yes," said young Joseph, and his wife stopped thinking that Joseph was really going to explain, but he only added: "It all depends upon circumstances!" So she went on: "You know that Godfrey Baldrian, who is Joseph's nephew, is a very religious young man and has been working hard preparing to become candidate for a living--but you must often have seen him here?"--"Yes," said Bräsig with a nod, "he's a very good young man, a sort of Methodist, and wears his hair combed straight down behind his ears to make him look like the pictures of our Lord. He tried to convert me once when he saw me going out to fish on a Sunday morning."--"That's the very man I mean. Well, he hasn't quite finished with the university yet, and his father, the school-master, wants us to let him come here for a time that he may study without interruption. And we wanted to ask you whether we ought to consent to this arrangement."--"Why not? Methodists are quiet, well-behaved people who only care about the conversion of others, and you, Mrs. Nüssler, will provide them with an object, and young Joseph is--thank God!--not to be converted by me and young Bolster."--"That's all very well, Bräsig, but the thick end of the wedge is coming. You see that Rudolph Kurz, another nephew of Joseph's, is also studying for Holy Orders, and we have had a letter from his father to say that as he understands that Godfrey is going to lodge with us for a time, he would like us to take his son too. Now Rudolph has been amusing himself in Rostock instead of working, and his father thinks he'll be able to read better in a quiet place like this. But I just ask you how that's possible? If he didn't learn in Rostock where he had all sorts of learned professors to help him, do you think that he'll do any better when there's only Joseph and me?"--"I know him too," answered Bräsig, "he's a very nice young fellow.