He bowed, and with a malicious smile remarked that he always knew that Miss Hertha could not endure him, but that was not here or there. Now the master had come home, she would find out fast enough what it was to be a stranger in the house, and what a true friend she had had in him. Hertha, hard hit, cast down her eyes. But kind old grandmamma put her arm protectingly round her neck. Whereupon the old gentleman lighted a cigar, thrust a sandwich of buttered rolls into his pocket, squeezed out a few farewell tears, and after Elly, with characteristic meekness, had submitted to having her forehead kissed by his atrocious lips, he retired in the _rôle_ of the chivalrous old worthy. All the morning Hertha carried about with her a sense of intolerable wrong. It was not till she heard Leo, after lunch, say to his mother, "The old uncle, by Jove! has been summarily dismissed," did she feel slightly comforted, and concluded that perhaps, after all, the world had not been made so comfortable for unpunished rogues as she had supposed. Her relations with the returned master of the house somewhat improved. He had addressed a few playful remarks to her at meals, and had taken her retorts with gay good humour. It looked as if he had quite forgotten that she had offended him. "He doesn't think I am grown up," she reflected bitterly. And the idea she had entertained the whole day of asking him formally for forgiveness was gradually abandoned. It was after tea that he came to her, and in his usual lighthearted and lively manner said: "Now then, little one, if you like, we will do some accounts." She glowed under a swelling wave of pride. At last he had asked her, had felt himself forced to regard her management of certain departments as a serious matter. But she would not have been so proud if she had suspected that grandmamma had hinted to him that it would give her pleasure if he would go over her accounts with her. Her books were in beautiful order. Since yesterday morning she had longed to show him the blue octavo exercise-book, but had not had the courage to do so uninvited. Now, sitting opposite him, she produced records of her heroic achievements, with flaming cheeks. She had reared and fattened twelve turkeys, and sold ten in Königsberg; she had sent eighty chickens to the Münsterberg market, and got an average price of sixty-five pfennigs apiece for them. The sound eggs that were over had been bought at home by a dealer, so that no deduction had to be made for waste. A greater bargain still was in course of completion for unfattened geese, though some were to be stuffed for the sake of the liver, but the season had not come yet for that.