The winter passed without the occurrence of any event of particular interest. Hawermann was accustomed to the monotony of his life, and was perfectly contented with it as far as he himself was concerned; but the young people sometimes found it dull and lonely, especially Frank von Rambow, for Fred Triddelfitz had his aunt at the parsonage, and his dear mother a little further off at Rahnstädt, to say nothing of the housekeeper, Mary Möller, who was close at hand, and who comforted him in his loneliness with many a savoury morsel of spiced goose, or sausage, so that there was soon a secret understanding between them. Sometimes they treated each other like mother and son, for Mary Möller was seven years older than Fred, she was _quite_ four and twenty; sometimes a more tender sentiment was infused into their intercourse, for Mary Möller was _only_ four and twenty, and Fred had always studied novels more diligently than Latin grammar when he was at school; indeed he had been a regular subscriber to the circulating-library, and was therefore quite up to the most approved method of conducting an affair of the kind. Besides that, his father's last words to him when he left home were: Learn everything practically, a piece of advice which Hawermann was also continually dinning into his ears, so he thought a love-affair might be as useful to him as any other branch of knowledge, and--do not misunderstand me, no harm was done--so it was, in providing him with an abundant supply of spiced goose and sausages.