This time, Bräsig really did laugh, for, behind the first dark figure that came over the hill he saw a second, and behind the second a third, and he chuckled to himself, behind his thorn-bush: "So! There is Karl Habermann, too; and now the whole inspectorship of Pumpelhagen is on foot, probably out to see how the peas look in the evening. This looks like a comedy!"
The Frau Pastorin did not see the others, she saw merely her precious nephew, who came straight towards her. Now he ran across the bridge, now he ran along the bank of the ditch, now he sprang forward a couple of feet, and clasped his dear aunt about the waist: "Beloved angel!" "Wait, you rascal!" cried she in reply, and with the grip which Bräsig had taught her she seized him, not exactly by the throat, but by the coat-collar, and cried with a clear voice, "The Philistines be upon thee!" and Bräsig, the Philistine, scrambled up. Oh, thunder! his foot was asleep! but no matter! He hopped on one leg along the ditch, and almost sprang upon Fritz; but the overtasked leg failed under the weight of the hundred and eighty pounds it dragged after it; Bräsig fell backwards into a thorn-bush, lost his balance, and tumbled, a lump of misfortune, into the foot and a half of ditch-water.
There he sat, for a moment, stiff and stark, as if he were at the water-cure, taking a sitz-bath. Fritz, also, stood stiff and stark, and felt as if he were taking a bath, but a shower-bath: he stood fairly under the stream of his aunt's indignant reproaches, which rushed and roared about his ears, ever ending with the words: "The dragon has you now, my son! The dragon has you now!"
"And here comes the horned beast!" growled Bräsig, who had scrambled out of the ditch, and was close upon them. But Fritz had come to himself by this time; he broke loose from his aunt, and would have escaped, if a new enemy had not come upon him, from across the ditch. This was Franz, and it was not long before Habermann also was there, and the little Frau Pastorin had scarcely recovered from this shock, when her Pastor stood before her, asking, "For heaven's sake, Regina, what does all this mean?"
The little Frau Pastorin was at the last extremity; but Bräsig was not quite so far gone, although he felt as if he were changed into running waters, and on the point of dissolving. "Infamous greyhound!" cried he, giving Fritz a couple of digs under the ribs, "must I go and get my cursed Podagra again, on your account? But they shall all know what a confounded Jesuit you are. Habermann, he----"