"The day is long enough, little fool," I say to her. I am on fire. I do not know where to look first, whether at the blue sky, or the green fields, or over there, at the end of the world, where the sky has become one with the earth. Or shall I look at Busie's shining face--into her large beautiful eyes that are to me deep as the heavens and dreamy as the night? Her eyes are always dreamy. A deep sorrow lies hidden within them. They are veiled by a shade of melancholy. I know her sorrow. I am acquainted with the cause of her melancholy. She has a great grief in her heart. She is pained because her mother married a stranger, and went away from her for ever and ever, as if she had been nothing to her. In my home her mother's name must not be mentioned. It is as if Busie had never had a mother. My mother is her mother, and my father is her father. They love her as if she were their own child. They fret over her, and give her everything that her heart desires. There is nothing too dear for Busie. She wanted to go with me to gather green boughs for the Festival decorations (I told her to ask it), and my father said to my mother: "What do you think?" He looked over his silver spectacles, and stroked the silver white hair of his beard. And there went on an argument between my father and mother about our going off outside the town to gather green boughs for the "_Shevuous_." Father: "What do you say?" Mother: "What do you say?" Father: "Shall we let them go?" Mother: "Why should we not let them go?" Father: "Do I say we should not?" Mother: "What then are you saying?" Father: "I am saying that we should let them go." Mother: "Why should they not go?" And so forth. I know what is worrying them. About twenty times my mother warned me, my father repeating the words after her, that there is a bridge to be crossed, and under the little bridge there is a water--a stream, a stream, a stream. * * * We, Busie and I, have long forgotten the little bridge and the river, the stream. We are going across the broad free Levada, under the blue, open sky. We run across the green field, fall and roll about on the sweet-smelling grass. We get up, fall again, and roll about again, and yet again. We have not yet gathered a single green leaf for the Festival decorations. I take Busie over the length and breadth of the Levada. I show off before her with my property. "Do you see those trees? Do you see this sand? Do you see that little hill?"