Annele thanked him cordially with a smile. But it flashed across her mind, "And Lenz could go away without even saying good morning to me!"
She now told the Pastor, in fluent language, how pleased she was to find that her Pastor should pay her such a compliment. She said much of his goodness, and that the whole village ought daily to pray that God might long spare him to them. Annele evidently wished, by her easy volubility, to lead her visitor to other topics, in order to prevent his discussing her affairs; she was resolved not to allow the Pastor, even in the mildest form, to offer himself as a mediator in their household discord. She screwed up her lips with the same energy that Gregor the postilion displayed, when he was going to play one of his well studied flourishes on the horn.
The Pastor saw this plainly enough. He began to praise Annele on points where she really well deserved praise; that she was at all times so stirring and orderly, and, with all her bantering ways, she had yet invariably been strictly virtuous, and taken charge so admirably of her father's house.
"I am so little accustomed to hear praise now," answered Annele, "that the sound is quite strange to me, and I feel as if I never had been of use during my life, or ever had been good for anything."
The Pastor nodded, though very slightly. The hook was fast in; and just as a physician wins the confidence of an invalid by saying, "You suffer from such and such a pain, you ache here, or you are oppressed there,"--and the invalid looks up gladly, thinking, "This man knows my complaint already, and is sure to cure me;" so did the Pastor contrive to describe Annele's sorrows, as if he had experienced them himself.
Annele could no longer resist this sympathy, and Lenz came in for his full share of reproach and blame. "Help us, Herr Pastor!" said she.
"Yes, I can and will; but some one else must help too, and that is yourself."
The worthy man seemed suddenly to become taller, and his voice more powerful, as he reminded Annele of her hardheartedness towards Franzl, and of all the false pride she nourished in her heart. Annele listened with flashing eyes, and when the Pastor reproached her with her transgression against Franzl, she broke loose, as if on some prey for which she had laid in wait.