"Who says that I have any thoughts of marrying?"
"My opinion is that if you do marry you ought to marry the beadle's daughter, Kathrine: she is come of good people, and has a great respect for you--she can talk of nothing but you. Such a wife would be worth having. It would be a bad business if you got a wife to whom you would have to play second fiddle. Girls, now-a-days, are so stylish in their ideas, and think of nothing but dress and vanity."
"I have no thoughts of marriage, especially at this moment."
"And you are right: it is not at all necessary--you will never better yourself, believe me. And I know how you have been coddled all your life, and I will take care to manage every thing so that you may almost think your mother is still in the world. Tell me, don't you find the beans good? I learned how to dress them from your mother--they are the very same. She understood everything, from the greatest thing to the least. You shall see how well pleased you will be while we live together--as happy as the day is long."
"But, Franzl," said Lenz, "I don't think I shall be long as I am."
"Really? Have you any one in your eye already? Look there!--People had agreed that Lenz had nothing in his head but his mother and his clocks! I only hope she comes of a good family. As I told you, Kathrine would be a wife for Saturdays and Sundays; she can work both in the house and in the fields; and her spinning is so first-rate, that I do believe she could spin the very straw off the roof. She thinks more of you than any one, and all that you do and say is sacred in her eyes. She always says--'All that Lenz does is right,' even when it appears otherwise, like his working yesterday;' and she will have a nice little nest egg of money, and a property besides from her mother, which will be an ample provision for one of your children."
"Franzl, there is no question of marriage at all. I have some idea--I have not yet quite made up my mind--of selling, or letting all my property, and going to foreign parts."
Franzl stared at Lenz in dismay, pausing halfway in lifting the spoon out of the plate to her mouth. Lenz continued--"I will take care to provide for you, Franzl--you shall never know want; but I have never yet seen the world, and I should like to do so, and to see and learn something, and perhaps I may improve in my own calling; and who knows----"