"Father," said the girl, "what's the matter with you? What kind of a joke is this? The cat isn't there." "You goose," said Herr Rauchfuss, "have you got a hole in your eyes big enough for the cat to get through?" He stood up and pretended to be playing with the invisible cat. "There ... What? You'd bite, would you? That's something new! Like a dog ... the beast!" His face took on a dull red, and the veins in his temples stood out. He gave a kick. "There--that'll teach her a lesson! Such a brute was never nailed up to a barn door!" He sat down again as if satisfied, breathing heavily. He looked ill. Now he had grown quite pale, with a bluish tint under the eyes, and his glance was expressionless. The child would have called the housekeeper, but she was afraid to stir from her place, and began to cry bitterly. Herr Rauchfuss broke out again: "There ...! It's back again--don't you see it?" he cried angrily. "Open your eyes!" He stared stonily in front of him. "There's no doing anything with a beast like that. Out you go!" And he made as if to thrust it away with his foot. All at once a tender mood came over him. "Tubby," he said in a weary voice, "you've got to be a good girl ... What do you suppose it costs me to see to it that you are? To bring up a motherless child is no easy job for an old sinner. Go, child, brew me a grog, a fine one ... an infernally fine one ... that'll do me good!" Such remarkable scenes as this took place now more frequently. In between there were calm days, on which Herr Rauchfuss did not seem to be feeling particularly well. Sometimes he would eat nothing all day, and was out of humor and dull. On a fine summer afternoon Frau Marianne, the young widow, came wandering up to the Ettersberg through the swelling fields, and asked for Mamsell Beate Rauchfuss, whom she found in the garden. The child was lying asleep on the lawn that was used for bleaching, and did not wake when the stranger approached her. "Queer," thought the young widow, "to lie and sleep like that! What does the girl do with herself, I wonder, the whole day long?" She looked at the auburn hair that was wound in a great coil around the head, the tender face, the small well-cut nose, the mouth that seemed to be a compound of strength and sorrow, the young body in a short pink dress; a pair of round childish arms; brown hands that attracted the eye. One of them was clenched as if to say, "What I hold, I hold; what I will, I will." The young widow thought to herself, "The fine estate would be well enough, and the old man too. But the girl ...!" It was really too bad that a poor woman should have to go to so much trouble in order to have a place to slip into--that one might be good and clever and pretty, and yet all that didn't help. However you took it, it was always a difficult business ... She thought of her boarders, and of more than one pleasing possibility that had slipped through her fingers.