In the evening of this Sunday, Erick sat in the midst of the pastor’s family around the four-cornered sitting-room table, as snugly and familiarly as if he long since belonged there.  He had been treated, the whole afternoon, with such kindness by all, that his whole heart, which had been accustomed to a mother’s great love, opened, and he felt more happy than he had in all the sad days since he had had to miss this love.  Sally did not know how she could do enough to give him pleasure.  Now she had brought the most beautiful picture book that she owned, and Erick looked with her at the pictures, which she eagerly explained to him; all the time beaming with joy that everything, she had believed lost, had come to her; that Erick was in the midst of them at home like a near friend, and was to stay over the night, for the father had arranged that at once.

Edi sat over his history book and Ritz had a book of his own before him, but looked over it at Sally and listened to her explanation.  Now Edi lifted his head—­he must have come upon something very particular.

“Papa,” he said, “now I know for certain what I want to be:  a sea-captain.  Then I can sail around the world, for sometime I must see all the lands where all these things have happened.”

“So, I thought you wanted to be a professor of history,” remarked the father, not much disturbed by this piece of news.

“I want to be that, too,” said Ritz, “I, too, want to sail in ships.”

“No, you see, Ritz, two brothers must not be the same thing, else they get in each other’s way,” instructed Edi.

“Then I will be a sea-robber, they too sail in ships,” Ritz comforted himself.

“We will not hope anything of the kind,” said the father behind his church paper.

“And do you remember, Ritz, what I once told you about Julius Caesar?” Edi reminded him.  “If I were to catch you like that, then I should be obliged to have you killed.”

“No, I do not want that!  But what can one be with ships?” Ritz asked plaintively, for if Edi expressed a thought, then it usually remained firmly in Ritz’s head.

“One can be also something very good without ships, my dear Ritz,” the mother said comfortingly, “and that is much safer; then one stays on firm land, and I should advise you to stay.  And what does our Erick want to be?  Has he too thought of that?”

“I must become an honorable man,” answered Erick at once.

“That is no calling,” instructed Edi.

But the father put down his book and said, nodding at the boy:  “That is right, Erick, go toward that goal:  first, and above all, an honorable man; after that, every calling is all right.”

Now the mother rose, for it was time to go to bed.  Edi and Ritz took Erick between them and thus marched ahead of the mother to conduct him to his little room which was beside their bedroom, so that the door between could be left open, with the advantage that Erick also could be drawn into the nightly conversation.  Both Edi and Ritz were delighted with that.