Here Schlessen scratched his head. He was not quite sure that he knew, and felt himself unable to explain clearly what he himself only conjectured dimly. “At any rate it is so. That’s what she has got to be made to understand, or else she must give it up and go and live quietly in private. It’ll come to that, that she won’t have a servant about the place if she goes on like this. Her own grandfather and grandmother were very good sort of people, but it is useless to try and live like them. You might just as well go back further, and give up knives and forks and cups and saucers.” Such was the wisdom of Herr Schlessen; and when he had spoken it he was ready to go back from the waterfall, near which they were seated, to the house. But Malchen thought that there was another subject as to which he ought to have something to say to her. “It is all very bad for us;--isn’t it, Fritz?” “It will come right in time, my darling.” “Your darling! I don’t think you care for me a bit.” As she spoke she moved herself a little further away from him. “If you did, you would not take it all so easily.” “What can I do, Malchen?” She did not quite know what he could do, but she was sure that when her lover, after a month’s absence, got an opportunity of sitting with her by a waterfall, he should not confine his conversation to a discussion on the value of zwansigers. “You never seem to think about anything except money now.” “That is very unfair, Malchen. It was you asked me, and so I endeavoured to explain it.” “If you have said all that you’ve got to say, I suppose we may go back again.” “Of course, Malchen, I wish she’d settle what she means to do about you. We have been engaged long enough.” “Perhaps you’d like to break it off.” “You never knew me break off anything yet.” That was true. She did know him to be a man of a constant, if not of an enthusiastic temperament. And now, as he helped her up from off the rock, and contrived to snatch a kiss in the process, she was restored to her good humour. “What’s the good of that?” she said, thumping him, but not with much violence. “I did speak to mother a little while ago, and asked her what she meant to do.” “Was she angry?” “No;--not angry; but she said that everything must remain as it is till after the season. Oh, Fritz! I hope it won’t go on for another winter. I suppose she has got the money.” “Oh, yes; she has got it; but, as I’ve told you before, people who have got money do not like to part with it.” Then they returned to the house; and Malchen, thinking of it all, felt reassured as to her lover’s constancy, but was more than ever certain that, though it might be for five years, he would never marry her till the mitgift had been arranged.