When his proposal had been accepted, the host went to attend to the necessary preparations, and Botho and Lena were left once more to enjoy to the full the happiness of being quietly alone together. A finch whose nest was in a low bush near by was swinging on a drooping twig of the elm, the swallows were darting here and there, and finally came a black hen followed by a whole brood of ducklings, passed the veranda, and strutted pompously out on a little wooden pier that was built far out over the water. But half way along this pier the hen stopped, while the ducklings plunged into the water and swam away. Lena watched all this eagerly. "Just look, Botho, how the stream rushes through among the posts." But actually it was neither the pier nor the water flowing through, that attracted her attention, but the two boats that were moored there. She coquetted with the idea and indulged in various trifling questions and references, and only when Botho remained deaf to all this did she express herself more plainly and declare that she wanted to go boating. "Women are incorrigible. Incorrigible in their light-mindedness. Think of that Easter Monday! Just a hair's breadth ..." "And I should have been drowned. Certainly. But that is only one side of the matter. There followed the acquaintance with a handsome man, you may be able to guess whom I mean. His name is Botho. I am sure you will not think of Easter Monday as an unlucky day? I am more amiable and more gallant than you." "There, there.... But can you row, Lena?" "Of course I can. And I can steer and raise a sail too. Because I was near being drowned, you think I don't know anything? But it was the boy's fault, and for that matter, any one might be drowned." And then they walked down the pier to the two boats, whose sails were reefed, while their pennants with their names embroidered on them fluttered from the masthead. "Which shall we take," said Botho, "the _Trout_ or the _Hope_?" "Naturally, the _Trout_. What have we to do with _Hope_?" Botho understood well enough that Lena said that on purpose to tease him, for in spite of her delicacy of feeling, still as a true child of Berlin she took pleasure in witty little speeches. He excused this little fling, however, and helped her into the boat. Then he sprang in too. Just as he was about to cast off the host came down the pier bringing a jacket and a plaid, because it would grow cold as the sun went down. They thanked him and soon were in the middle of the stream, which was here scarcely three hundred paces wide, as it flowed among the islands and tongues of land. Lena used her oars only now and then, but even these few strokes sufficed to bring them very soon to a field overgrown with tall grass which served as a boatbuilder's yard, where at some little distance from them a new boat was being built and various old leaky ones were being caulked and repaired.