Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/47

 days, as he takes physic, and not come to like it in the end.’

‘If you will have the papers drawn, you may even burthen the purchase with your interest,’ said Otto. ‘Let it be assured to you through life.’

‘Your friend, sir,’ insinuated Killian, ‘would not, perhaps, care to make the interest reversible? Fritz is a good lad.’

‘Fritz is young,’ said the Prince dryly; ‘he must earn consideration, not inherit.’

‘He has long worked upon the place, sir,’ insisted Mr. Gottesheim; ‘and at my great age, for I am seventy-eight come harvest, it would be a troublesome thought to the proprietor how to fill my shoes. It would be a care spared to assure yourself of Fritz. And I believe he might be tempted by a permanency.’

‘The young man has unsettled views,’ returned Otto.

‘Possibly the purchaser’ began Killian.

A little spot of anger burned in Otto’s cheek. ‘I am the purchaser,’ he said.

‘It was what I might have guessed,’ replied the farmer, bowing with an aged, obsequious dignity. ‘You have made an old man very happy; and I may say, indeed, that I have entertained an angel unawares. Sir, the great people of this world—and by that I mean those