"Henny," he said, "I intend to go to the next parliament."--"Oh!" said his wife, "hav'n't you any other opportunity of spending money?"--"Why, chick, my position demands that I should show myself there, and it won't cost me much. The next parliament is to meet at Malchin, which isn't far from here, and if I take a basket ....."--"Then I suppose you expect me to put on your boots, and wade through the mud to see that the men are doing their work?"--"You needn't trouble to do that, my chick. Gus will look after everything of that sort, and if I'm wanted I can be home at an hour's notice."--"But father," said Mally, who was considered a great politician because she was the only one of the family who ever read the Rostock newspaper to such purpose as to know where their Serene Highnesses the Grand-Duke and Grand-Duchess were staying, for Pomuchelskopp looked at nothing but the state of the corn and money markets. "But father," she said, "you ought not to go unless you are prepared to try and bring about some reforms of great importance, such as allowing middle-class landowners to wear red coats, and then the convent question." She spoke as if she thought the convent question had reference to herself.--"What!" cried Pomuchelskopp, rising and pacing the room with long strides, "you surely don't think so meanly of your father as to imagine that he would go and give his votes and influence to the middle-class landowners and neglect the interests of his own family? No, if anything goes wrong here, write for me to come home. And as for the red coat, if I'm to have it I know the best way--Let everyone look out for himself--It'll redound more to my honour if I win it for myself _alone_, and not merely as one of a lot of poor wretches who have only a few hundred pounds to bless themselves with. When I come home and say: Mally, I alone have got it; you may be proud of your father." While saying this he crossed the room, and blew a cloud of tobacco smoke right in the face of his innocent child, making her look like one of the angels with a trumpet sitting in the clouds, and as if she had only to put the mouth piece of the trumpet to her lips to blow a blast in her father's honour.--"Are you crazy, Kopp?" asked his wife.--"Let me alone, Henny. We must keep up our dignity. Show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are. If I vote with the nobles and ....."--"I should have thought that you'd have had enough snubbing from the nobles already."--"Henny," remonstrated Pomuchelskopp, but was stopped by Sally who was seated at the window, exclaiming: "Law! Here's Mr. von Rambow coming across the court."--"Henny," said Pomuchelskopp again, turning his expressive eyes reproachfully on his wife, "you see that a nobleman is coming to my house! But now, clear out of this, will you," he went on, driving his younger olive branches out at the door. "Mally take away the coffee things. Sally bring a duster and be quick about it. And Henny go and put on another gown."--"What!" said his wife. "Is the young man coming to my house, or am I going to his? As he thinks fit to come here, he may just take me as he finds me."--"Henny," entreated Pomuchelskopp, "let me implore you to do as I ask, you'll spoil the whole visit if you appear in that old black dress."--"Are you a fool, Muchel?" she asked without moving. "Do you think that he is coming here for the sake of either of us? He's only coming because he needs our help, and so my dress is quite good enough."--Muchel begged her once more to do as he wanted, but in vain.--Mally and Sally hastened from the room to make themselves tidy, but their mother remained sitting on her chair as stiff and upright as a poker.