we claim his company, you know, on account of the debt of gratitude we owe dear Mrs Milbirn,—and I am sure all the town will be dying of envy to think that we should have caught him for ourselves.”
The postillion’s information that all was ready sounded most gratefully in my ears, while this insufferable bore of an exciseman was alternately amusing and disgusting me with his gross and vulgar selfishness and shallow cunning. Mr Zwicker assured me he was ready to set out with his family also; but insisted on Bernhardine accompanying me in the chaise, in order to point out his house to the postillion. My rejection of this proposal almost threw him into a passion, and he began to reproach Bernhardine for not seconding his proposal herself; but the poor girl could not be persuaded to open her lips, and only expressed by her looks her wish that I would comply with her father’s request. At last, on my taking him aside and representing to him, that if I were now to occupy his house there would not be accommodation for my friend the councillor when he arrived, the bore of a fellow desisted from pressing my acceptance of his offer, and recommended me to take up my quarters at the Golden Ox, as the best inn in Klarenburg. I observed that the postillion had recommended the Blue Angel, whereupon the exciseman grew more, warm in his praise of the Golden Ox, abusing the landlord of the Blue Angel for a low worthless character, who never failed to fleece all strangers smartly that placed themselves under his roof, and whose daughter was such an insufferable flirt as rendered it quite impossible for any young man aspiring to keep company with the genteel society of the place to live at the Blue Angel.
During this harangue I observed the odious creature—whom I now began to hate almost beyond endurance—cast several significant glances at Bernhardine, who either for awhile did not understand, or pretended not to know their meaning; but at last when his countenance had assumed a quite furious expression, the poor girl timidly rose, and col-
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