Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/81

 but it lacked joy and homeliness. Certainly we were poor, but that alone was not the cause of the discomfort. Can you imagine, I was fourteen years old before I had ever been to Loschwitz? Of course we came now and then on to the terrace. It was a gala day for my brother and me when father took us to Plauen, where he sometimes had his glass of beer. In those days most of the factories had not been built; it was lovely in the small valley by Weisseritz, and we so enjoyed clambering about the rocks. It was there I found just such beautiful pebbles as these. In the evenings he also sometimes took mother with him to the beer-house; it was a reminiscence of the early days of their married life, when she used to accompany him every evening. And if you, when you go back to town, look in at 'Zur Katze' in Castle Street about eight o'clock you will see, in the inner room, an old woman, who is supposed to be like me, sitting with her glass of beer; and if she has a friend with her, she will spin a long sentimental yarn about the many cosy hours she has spent in this very room with her late dear husband. When the remembrance of home-comfort lodges in 'Zur Katze,' you can imagine what remained for my brother and myself! We attended a good school, but that was our whole education. Father never troubled about us, and that was a great pity, for he was not only a well-educated man, but also right-minded and very honourable. This, however, I only recognised as I grew older; it was quite in a fragmentary way that I got to understand anything about him, for he was most reserved. He never spoke to mother about anything but the weather, and sometimes after reading the newspaper they quarrelled a little about politics. Father was an Imperialist, but mother was on the Saxonian side and hated the Prussians; she could not understand