"Oh, Niklas, what a hard-hearted man you are!" sobbed his sister. "Auntie is right, you will never be able to justify yourself for what you are doing to your brother-in-law's child----" "And it's better to be a rag-picker than such a shiftless cobbler who wastes the time God has given him at the beer table in the Red Ram. And a creature like that wants to balk and kick out behind if a poor child wants to get ahead! If he'd only wash his hands and comb his hair, the fellow! I'd like to see anybody that would want to take him for an example and a model. There isn't anybody else like him and a man like that wants to keep others from washing themselves and being an honor to their parents. But I build on God, Master Grünebaum. He'll show you what you really are. It's really absurd that a man wants to play the guardian who can't even guard himself." The melody "Kindly moon, thou glidest softly" must have a very soothing effect indeed on human feelings; Uncle Grünebaum whistled it meltingly as long as Auntie Schlotterbeck continued to speak, and however great may have been the anger that boiled in his breast, the world saw nothing of it. When Hans Unwirrsch came home from school with his bag of books he found the two women in a very excited state with scarlet faces, and his uncle quite composed, even-tempered and calm;--he did indeed guess what they had been talking about again but he seldom learnt any of the details of the discussion. Usually Uncle Grünebaum took his departure while whistling a hymn or some other solemn air and at the same time pinching poor Hans' ear with a grin; Mephistopheles might have envied him his smile and after he had gone the women generally dropped on the nearest chairs, exhausted and broken in spirit, and for several hours were incapable of believing in human and divine justice.