"I'll be ready to give you something presently," she said, stroking her little girls' flaxen heads fondly, "but I must see to your little cousin first.--Here's so chair for you, Bräsig--Come, Joseph."--"All right," said Joseph, blowing a last long cloud of smoke out of the left corner of his mouth, and then dragging his chair forward, half sitting on it all the time.--"Charles," said Bräsig, "I can recommend these sausages. Your sister, Mrs. Nüssler, makes them most capitally, and I've often told my housekeeper that she ought to ask for the receipt, for you see the old woman mixes up all sorts of queer things that oughtn't to go together at all; in short, the flavour is very extraordinary and not in the least what it ought to be, although each of the ingredients separately is excellent, and made of a pig properly fattened on pease."--"Mother, give Bräsig some more beer," said Joseph.--"No more, thank you, Mrs. Nüssler. May I ask for a little kümmel instead?--Charles, since the time that I was learning farming at old Knirkstädt with you, and that rascal Pomuchelskopp, I've always been accustomed to drink a tiny little glass of kümmel at breakfast and supper, and it agrees with me very well, I am thankful to say. But, Charles, whatever induced you to have any business transactions with such a rascal as Pomuchelskopp? I told you long ago that he was not to be trusted, he's a regular old Venetian, he's a cunning dog, in short, he's a--Jesuit."--"Ah, Bräsig," said Hawermann, "we won't talk about it. He might have treated me differently; but still it was my own fault, I oughtn't to have agreed to his terms.--I'm thinking of something else now. I wish I could get something to do!"--"Of course, you must get a situation as soon as possible.--The Count, my master, is looking out for a steward for his principal estate, but don't be angry with me for saying so Charles, I don't think that it would do for you.--You see, you'd have to go to the Count every morning with laquered boots, and a cloth coat, and you'd have to speak High-German, for he considers our provincial way of talking very rude and uncultivated. And then you'd have all the women bothering you, for they have a great say in all the arrangements. You might perhaps manage with the boots, and the coat, and the High-German--though you're rather out of practice--but you'd never get on with the women. The Countess is always poking about to see that all's going on rightly in the cattle-sheds and pig-sties,--in short--it's, it's as bad as Sodom and Gomorrah."--"Bless me!" cried Mrs. Nüssler, "I remember now. The farm-bailiff at Pümpelhagen left at the midsummer-term, and that would just be the place for you, Charles."--"Mrs. Nüssler is right as usual," said Bräsig. "As for the _Counsellor_[4] at Pümpelhagen"--he always gave the squire of Pümpelhagen his professional title, and laid such an emphasis on the word counsellor that one might have thought that he and Mr.