"With Lining and Gottlieb?" asked Mining anxiously, "and have you listened to that, too?" "Of course I listened to it, it was on their account I perched myself in this confounded cherry-tree. But now come here Monsieur Rudolph. Will you, all your life long, never again go into the pulpit and preach a sermon?" "No, never again." "Will you get up at four o'clock in the morning, and three o'clock in the summer-time, and give out fodder grain?" "Always, at the very hour." "Will you learn how to plough and harrow and mow properly, and to reap and bind sheaves, that is, with a band,--there is no art in using a rope?" "Yes," said Rudolph. "Will you promise never to sit over the punch-bowl, at the Thurgovian ale-house, when your wagons are already gone, and then ride madly after them?" "I will never do it," said Rudolph. "Will you also never in your life--Mining, see that beautiful larkspur, the blue, I mean, just bring it to me, and let me smell it--will you," he continued, when she was gone, "never entangle yourself with the confounded farm-girls?" "Herr Inspector, what do you take me for?" said Rudolph angrily, turning away. "Come, come," said Bräsig, "every business must be settled beforehand, and I give you warning: for every tear my little godchild sheds on your account I will give your neck a twist," and he looked as fierce as if he were prepared to do it immediately. "Thank you Mining," said he, as she brought him the flower, and he smelled it, and stuck it in his buttonhole. "And now, come here, Mining, I will give you my blessing. No, you need not fall on your knees, since I am not one of your natural parents, but merely your godfather. And you, Monsieur Rudolph, I will stand by you this afternoon, when your father comes, and help you out of this clerical scrape. And now, come, both of you, we must go in. But I tell you, Rudolph, don't sit reading, by the ditches, but attend to the manure-strewing. You see there is a trick in it, the confounded farm-boys must take the fork, and then not throw it off directly, no! they must first break it up three or four times with the fork, so that it gets well separated. A properly manured field ought to look as neat and fine as a velvet coverlid." With that, he went, with the others, out of the garden gate. CHAPTER XIX. Towards the middle of the afternoon, the merchant Kurz, and the rector Baldrian were approaching the Rexow farm.