When Fred Triddelfitz entered the room where Hawermann, young Mr. von Rambow, and the housekeeper Mary Möller were seated at dinner the bailiff was startled, for he had never seen his new pupil before. Fred, in his new green hunting-coat, looked exactly like an asparagus stalk that had run to seed, he was so small and thin in the waist that any one could easily have cut him in two with his own riding-whip. It was quite true as the sorrel-horse had said, that he had red hair, his cheek bones were high, his face freckled, and his manner self-confident and bored. Hawermann could not help saying to himself: "Heaven preserve me! Am I to teach this young fellow? It's all up with me now!"--He was roused from his disagreeable reflections by a great shout of laughter from Frank von Rambow in which Mary Möller joined, secretly and holding her table-napkin up to her face to hide that she did so.--Fred, wishing to talk down their laughter, had just begun: "Good morning. Sir, I hope I see you well," when he caught sight of his old school-fellow at Parchen, Frank von Rambow, who was in convulsions of laughter; he looked at him rather sheepishly at first, but after a moment joined heartily in the laugh against himself, and even grave old Hawermann laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks.--"Why," cried Frank, "whatever induced you to get yourself up so grandly?"--"One should do everything in style!" said Fred, whereupon Mary Möller once more disappeared behind her table-napkin.--"Come, Triddelfitz," said Hawermann, "sit down and have some dinner."--Fred did so, and anyone would have said that the rascal was in luck, he had begun his country life at the best time of the year for food, when geese were in season, and as it was Sunday, a finely browned roast goose was on the table, so that his first experience of a farmer's life might well be a pleasing one to him. He did not spare the goose in any way, and Hawermann thought that, if he sat on horseback as he did at table, if he paid as much attention to the labourers as he did to the goose, if he understood foddering a horse as well as feeding himself, and if he swept everything under his charge as clean as his plate, he might expect him to be a great acquisition to the place.