But now roam slower, Fixlein, through his Lordship's garden of Hukelum; not, indeed, lest thy coat sweep away any tulip-stamina, but that thy good mother may have time to lay her Cupid's-band of black taffeta about her smooth brow. I am grieved to think my fair readers take it ill of her, that she means first to iron this same band: they cannot know that she has no maid; and that today the whole Preceptorial dinner--the money purveyances the guest has made over to her three days before--is to be arranged and prepared by herself, without the aid of any Mistress of the Household whatever; for indeed she belongs to the _Tiers Etat_, being neither more nor less than a gardener's widow. You can figure how this true, warm-hearted mother may have lain in wait all morning for her Schoolman, whom she loved as the apple of her eye; since, on the whole populous Earth, she had not (her first son, as well as her husband, was dead) any other for her soul, which indeed overflowed with love; not any other but her Zebedaeus. Could she ever tell you aught about him, I mean aught joyful, without ten times wiping her eyes? Nay, did she not once divide her solitary Kirmes (or Churchale) cake between two mendicant students, because she thought Heaven would punish her for so feasting, while her boy in Leipzig had nothing to feast on, and must pass the cake-garden like other gardens, merely smelling at it? "Dickens! Thou already, Zebedaeus!" said the mother, giving an embarrassed smile, to keep from weeping, as the son, who, had ducked past the window, and crossed the grassy threshold without knocking, suddenly entered. For joy she forgot to put the heater into the smoothing-iron, as her illustrious scholar, amid the loud boiling of the soup, tenderly kissed her brow, and even said Mamma; a name which lighted on her breast like downy silk. All the windows were open; and the garden, with its flower-essences, and bird-music, and butterfly-collections, was almost half within the room: but I suppose I have not yet mentioned that the little garden-house, rather a chamber than a house, was situated on the western cape of the Castle garden. The owner had graciously allowed the widow to retain this dowager-mansion; as indeed the mansion would otherwise have stood empty, for he now kept no gardener. But Fixlein, in spite of his joy, could not stay long with her; being bound for the Church, which, to his spiritual appetite, was at all times a king's kitchen; a mother's. A sermon pleased him simply because it was a sermon, and because he himself had once preached one. The mother was contented he should go: these good women think they enjoy their guests, if they can only give them aught to enjoy.