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And once more she paraded her virtues and her edifying design before the eyes of the good old woman and Herr Rauchfuss. "A devil of a girl!" muttered the captain in his red beard.
Dances, musical evenings, masked balls, sewing-circles were abundant that winter in Weimar, and the pretty Rauchfuss girl was asked to everything now it was one paying attention to her, now another. She had plenty of cavaliers: all the marriageable merchants' sons of the town, young lawyers in brief, the wooers recruited themselves from the entire circle of the townspeople, and even beyond it.
The time came, however, when the child was big enough to dance about in farm-yard and garden, looking like a flower with long golden stamina. She was simply brimming over with merriment and delight in being alive; and now Captain Rauchfuss condescended to take notice of his daughter.
For some time she had been wishing for something of the sort. Up there on the fine farm she would be very comfortable. When the snow lay on the ground, she would not have far to go to find her little pensioners, the ravens, whom she was accustomed to provide with food when the fields were snow-covered. She came up to the Rauchfuss farm at the beginning of November.
The less severe attacks he fought through on the Ettersberg, in his old home; and it was there that his last hour found him. The Sperbers had come, and old Frau Kummerfelden also, when they heard that Herr Rauchfuss was about to depart.
You a soldier's daughter!" The mother took the little girl in her arms and carried her to the house, paying no more attention to Herr Rauchfuss, who looked after her with a forced laugh. In the room where she and the child slept, she laid Beate, still dressed, on the bed. The child kept on sobbing; her face was burning, and her eyes glowed as with fever.
Go, child, brew me a grog, a fine one ... an infernally fine one ... that'll do me good!" Such remarkable scenes as this took place now more frequently. In between there were calm days, on which Herr Rauchfuss did not seem to be feeling particularly well. Sometimes he would eat nothing all day, and was out of humor and dull.
The first suitors who presented themselves were the two boarders of the pretty little widow with the heart-shaped face, Herr Oehmchen and Herr Leinhose. They paid a visit to the Sperbers, but not together; neither knew of the other's intention. They did not venture to go directly to the Rauchfuss farm; the thing was to be conducted with utmost propriety. "Hallo!" thought Herr Sperber.
Little Beate clung close to her mother, for this was a rare treat to wander in such a holiday fashion with the busy, hard-working woman. "Look, look, mother!" she kept crying at every moment: "There comes something! There's something! Listen a woodpecker! a deer!" The arms of the sturdy ten-year-old quivered with joy. Frau Rauchfuss felt her child's delight in life.
The girl rubbed her arms and kept on grinning. "I was to tell you that, he said. He was brewed and baked, he said just the same way as the people up here." The courtier jumped up, crying, "We can't have him in here he's a lunatic! It's quite impossible, my dear Mamsell Rauchfuss." Beate smiled. "If he's brewed and baked in the same way as all of us, why not?"
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