"I do not care what its value
was. I loved it! _I loved it_!"
"You little simpleton!" said the old man, kindly. "But you are wiser
than your father, when all's said. If sell it he must, he should have
taken it to good Herr Steiner over at Spruez, who would have given him
honest value. But no doubt they took him over his beer, ay, ay! but if
I were you I would do better than cry. I would go after it."
August raised his head, the tears raining down his cheeks.
"Go after it when you are bigger," said the neighbour, with a
good-natured wish to cheer him up a little. "The world is a small
thing after all: I was a travelling clockmaker once upon a time, and I
know that your stove will be safe enough whoever gets it; anything
that can be sold for a round sum is always wrapped up in cotton wool
by everybody. Ay, ay, don't cry so much; you will see your stove again
some day."
Then the old man hobbled away to draw his brazen pail full of water at
the well.
August remained leaning against the wall; his head was buzzing and his
heart fluttering with the new idea which had presented itself to his
mind. "Go after it," had said the old man. He thought, "Why not go
with it?" He loved it better than anyone, even better than Dorothea;
and he shrank from the thought of meeting his father again, his father
who had sold Hirschvogel.
He was by this time in that state of exaltation in which the
impossible looks quite natural and commonplace. His tears were still
wet on his pale cheeks, but they had ceased to fall.
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