“Here is just room enough for your head,” she said, pointing to a mole-hill which was just within the range of shade. He stretched himself out on the grass, his head resting on the mole-hill, his forehead covered by the hem of her dress. She leaned back on the bush in order to find support in its branches. “The needles don’t prick at all,” she said; “they mean well by us. I believe we could pass through the Sleeping Beauty’s hedge of thorns.” “You--not I,” he answered, lifting his eyes to her from his recumbent position; “every thorn has pricked me. I am no fairy prince, not even a simple Hans in luck, am I?” “That will all come in time,” she replied, consolingly, “you must not always have sad thoughts.” He wanted to reply, but he lacked the right words; and as he looked up, meditatively, a swallow flitted through the blue sky. Then involuntarily he uttered a whistle as if he wanted to call it, and as it did not come, he whistled again, and for a second and third time. Elsbeth laughed, but he went on whistling--first without knowing how, and without reflecting why; but when one tone after the other flowed from his lips, he felt as if he had become very eloquent all of a sudden, and as if in this manner he could say all that weighed on his heart and for which in words he never could have found courage. All that which made him sad, all that which he cared about came pouring forth. He shut his eyes and listened, so to speak, to what the tones were saying for him. He thought that the good God in heaven spoke for him, and was relating all that concerned him, even that which he had never been clear about himself. When he looked up he did not know how long he had been lying there whistling, but he saw that Elsbeth was crying. “Why do you cry?” he asked. She did not answer him, but dried her eyes with her handkerchief and rose. Silently they walked side by side for a while. When they reached the wood, which lay thick and dark before them, she stopped and asked, “Who has taught you that?” “Nobody,” he said; “it came to me quite naturally.” “Can you also play the flute?” she went on. No, he could not; he had never even heard it; he only knew that it was the favorite pastime of “old Fritz.” “You must learn it,” she said. He thought it would probably be too difficult for him. “You should try all the same,” she counselled him; “you must be an artist--a great artist.” He was startled when she said that; he scarcely dared to follow out her thoughts. When they had reached the other side of the wood they separated. She went towards the White House and he went back. When he passed the juniper-bush where they had both been sitting all seemed to him like a dream, and henceforth it always remained so to him. Two or three days elapsed before he dared to say anything of his adventure to his mother, but then he could contain himself no longer; he confessed everything to her.