However, for all his enthusiasm he never failed to show up in time for his Sunday supper. For that was indeed the sole chagrin he inflicted on the mistress at home that he never missed a meal, Sunday or any other day. The other workmen would go to the tavern with their comrades and friends, dance, play cards and amuse themselves. But not so Jobst. On his account alone the master's wife was forced to remain at home Sundays, or else to provide his lonesome supper. And then, after chewing as long as he could his portion of bread and sausage or cold meat, he would spend another considerable while pawing over his slender possessions, fingering them as though they were the treasures of Aladdin, with bated breath, and then he would retire to his strictly virtuous couch. That according to his notions had been an enjoyable, a roystering Sunday. But with all his humble, decent and inconspicuous ways, Jobst was not lacking in a species of inner, hidden irony, as though in his own peculiar way he were making fun of the world with its vanity and its foolishness. Indeed he seemed even to have strong doubts as to the grandeur and worth of things in general, and to be conscious of harboring within his own soul plans far more momentous and stirring. On Sundays, notably when delivering his expert opinions on creation as a whole, he often showed a face alive with superior, with almost owlish wisdom. It was plainly to be seen in his pinched features how he carried within his inmost ken plans of immense importance, plans compared with which the doings of the others, after all, were but as child's play. The great, the overwhelmingly great plan he cherished day and night and which had been all these years his loadstar, ever since he had first appeared in Seldwyla, amounted indeed to this: To save his wages until there would be a sum sufficient to present himself some fine morning, on an occasion when the business would be once more for sale, with the money in his hand and purchase it, himself at last becoming owner and master.