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Updated: June 2, 2025
Lavretsky would have liked to kill himself just then. Katrin the cook brought them some bad coffee, and then, when eight o'clock struck, Lemm put on his hat and went out saying that he was to have given a lesson at the Kalitines' at ten o'clock, but that he would find a fitting excuse for going there sooner.
But I am forgetting. My business at this time was to make love to Katrin, so that I might banish the ill impression which Helene had formed concerning that pleasant, harmless little Christian's Elsa over there. I never heard anything so foolish in my life. But, then, what women will think and say passes the imagination of man. Michael Texel indeed!
So I began to tell Katrin how that woman was the sacredest influence on the life of men, with other things as I could recollect them out of a book of chivalry which I had been reading, the fine sentiments of which it was a pity to waste. And as for the lass over the way Christian's Elsa she knew no more of letters than her father knew of the mathematics.
And you, Hugo Gottfried, like a great oaf, thinking all the time how innocent and sweet and oh, I have no patience with you! to neglect and think nothing of of Katrin Texel, and and then to go gazing and gaping after a thing like that!" And I declare there were tears in the Little Playmate's eyes.
If I do not have a care this tale of mine will turn out almost as painful as a book of devotion which they set children to read on saints' days to keep them from being over-happy. But I subdued my feelings and drew up somewhat nearer to Katrin. "My Little Sister " so I began, cunningly, as I thought "my sister Helene is, indeed, fortunate to have so fair a friend, and one so devoted "
What say you to her?" And this was because the minx knew well that I never could abide Katrin Texel, a girl all running to seed like a shot stalk of rhubarb, who would end up in the neighborhood of six foot in height, and just that "fine figure of a woman" which I never could abide. "Feech!" I would say, copying her Wendish expression.
The foolish fellow tells me that he listens for four little pit-a-pats every time that I come up from the court-yard, and is disappointed when there come back only my poor two." And Katrin becked and nodded and set her head to the side like to the divine Io-Cow playing at being little Jenny Wren.
So again I drew yet nearer to his sister. Katrin dimpled and showed her teeth, with a smile like the sun going about the world, till I had almost put my hand behind her shoulders to catch the ends of it when it got round. This illumination almost finished me, for it was not the kind of smile I had been accustomed to from well, that was not the business I was on at present.
"And so farewell, then, dear Mistress Katrin," said I. "The delicate pleasure of your presence shall be followed by the still more tender remembrance which, when you are gone, my heart shall continue to cherish of you." That was indeed well-minded. A whole sentence out of my romance-book without a single slip. Katrin bowed, with the airy grace of the Grand Duke's monument out in the square.
For it was as if some bland maternal cow out of the pasture had skipped with a hop and a circle of flying skirts into a ballroom or a butterfly of two hundred pounds' weight had taken to flitting from flower to flower. And this Katrin talked in a quick, light voice, with ups and downs and skips and quivers in it, as spring-heeled as a chamois goat on the mountains of the south.
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