He longed, to be sure, for his little room, for his father, for Presto--but he could better endure the quiet longing for them here than the painful, miserable meeting. And he felt as though here he could still think of Windekind, while at home he could not. Windekind was now certainly quite gone. Gone far away to the sunny land where palm-trees bend over the blue sea. He would do penance here and await his friend's return. So he begged the two good folks to let him live with them. He would be obedient and work for them. He would help to take care of the garden and the flowers, at any rate through this winter; for he hoped in his heart that Windekind would return with the Spring. The gardener and his wife supposed that Johannes had run away from home because he had been hardly treated. They pitied him, and promised to let him stay. So he remained and helped to work in the garden and attend to the flowers. They gave him a little room to sleep in with a bedstead painted blue. Out of it, in the morning, he could see the wet yellow lime-leaves flutter past the window, and at night the black boughs waving to and fro, and the stars playing hide-and-seek between them. And he gave names to the stars, and the brightest of them he called Windekind. He told his history only to the flowers, most of which he had known before at home; to the large, solemn asters, the many-hued zinnias, and the white chrysanthemums which bloom on so late into the blustering autumn. When all the rest of the flowers were dead the chrysanthemums still stood upright--even when one morning the first snow had fallen and Johannes came to see how they were getting on, they held up their cheerful faces and said: 'Yes, we are still here. You would never have thought it!' And they looked very brave; but two days later they were all dead. But palms and tree-ferns were still thriving in the hot-house, and the strange blossoms of orchids hung in the damp heat. Johannes peeped with amazement into their gorgeous cups, and thought of Windekind. How cold and colourless everything seemed then when he came out again--the sloppy snow with black footmarks, and the sighing, dripping branches of the trees! But when the snow-flakes had been noiselessly falling hour after hour so that the boughs bent under the growing burthen, Johannes ran off gleefully into the purple twilight of the snow-laden wood. That was silence--but not death. It was almost more lovely than summer verdure, as the dazzling whiteness of the tangled twigs made lace-work against the light-blue sky, or as one of the over-weighted boughs shook off its load of snow, which fell in a cloud of glittering powder.