Ernst was evidently provoked that Martella refused to go with him, but kept his anger to himself. In that summer, 1865, we had charming harvest weather, and I shall never forget Martella's saying, "I shall help gather the harvest. I was a gleaner once, and know that this is good weather for the farmers. To cut the ears in the morning and carry home the rich sheaves in the evening, without having had a storm during the day, is good for the farmer, but not so pleasant for the poor gleaner. Storms during the harvest time scatter the grain for the poor; for the farmers give nothing away of their own accord." Rothfuss looked towards me, and nodded approval of her words. Towards the end of summer, Richard paid us a visit. Richard had written to us some time before, and had referred to Ernst's conduct in indignant terms. He felt shocked that one who had not yet secured a livelihood for himself, had already linked the fate of another with his own, and had inflicted her presence upon the household. But from the first moment that he saw Martella, he admired her more than any of us had done. When he offered her his first brotherly greeting, she gazed at him with her brilliant eyes, and said, "I can see ten years ahead." "Have you the gift of prophecy?" "Oh pshaw! I don't mean that. What I mean is that in ten years from now Ernst will look as you now do. But I hope that when that time comes, he will not have to use spectacles." Richard laughed, and so did Martella quite heartily. There is nothing better than when two people laugh together at their first meeting. Later in the season, my daughter Johanna, who is the wife of a pastor in the Oberland who had once been Ludwig's teacher, came with her grown-up daughter to pay us a visit. Johanna's object in coming was to receive the benefit of the milk cure. At their very first meeting, she unintentionally affronted Martella. Johanna always wore black silk netted gloves, and when, with too evident an air of assumed kindness, she offered her hand to Martella, the latter said to her: "There is no need for a fly-net on your hand. I do not sting." After this trifling circumstance, there was many a heart-burning between Martella and Johanna. They were always at cross purposes. Rothfuss was provoked, as he was unable to satisfy Martella that the pastor's wife had not intended to affront her. Martella refused to be convinced, and persisted in calling Johanna a "fly-net." When she had once conceived an aversion for any one, she was immovable. And when Johanna came to the cow stables, which she did twice every day at milking-time, she would always in an ironical tone say, "Good-day, madam sister-in-law." Johanna found in this a cause for continued ill-feeling, to which, in her discontented and susceptible condition, she readily gave way.