This sort of talk is either understood or misunderstood according to the character of the hearer. Bräsig, like an honest man spoke out of the fulness of his heart without fear of misconception, but Alick did not take his speech to him as it was meant. He thought it very impertinent of a man like old Bräsig to hold up any one--even his own father who had always been so good to him--as an example for him to follow, so he remained silent and displeased.--Frida, on the contrary, had the gift of reading character, and saw the real kindness of heart below the eccentricity of diction, and so laying her hand again in that of the old gentleman she made him sit beside her at table. Fred Triddelfitz arrived soon after Hawermann. He was dressed like a young squire in a blue coat and brass buttons, that looked exactly like a child of Pomuchelskopp's best blue coat. The schoolmaster came next. He was a tall muscular man, who appeared to be better fitted by nature for hewing wood, than for thrashing children. With his round black head and seedy black clothes he resembled nothing so much as a huge nail that fate had stuck crookedly in a wall, and which had now grown rusty in its unnatural position. His face also was somewhat rusty. The only thing about him that might be said to look cheerful was his shirt front, and that was because his mother, seeing that it had grown yellow with lying in the drawer had freshened it up by rubbing some laundry blue on it, under which process it had gained a lovely sea-green colour.