Leonore had been looking so pale the last few days that Mrs. Maxa surveyed her anxiously. Perhaps the recovery had not been as complete as they had hoped, for the news of the close date of her departure had proved to be a great strain for her. Mrs. Maxa went about quite downcast and silent herself. Nothing for a long time had been so hard for her to bear as the thought of separation from the little girl she had begun to love like one of her own, who had also grown so lovingly attached to her. The pressure lay on them all very heavily. Bruno never said a word. Kurt, standing in a corner with a note-book, was busily scribbling down his melancholy thoughts, but he did not show his verses to anyone, as the tragic feeling in them might have drawn remarks from Bruno which he might not have been able to endure. Lippo faithfully followed Leonore wherever she went and from time to time repeated his consoling words, but he said them in such a wailing voice that they sounded extremely doleful. Mäzli alone still gazed about her with merry eyes and was dancing with joy when she saw that it was a bright sunny day. "You can take a little walk with Leonore, Mäzli," the mother said immediately after lunch, as soon as the other children had started off to school. "Leonore will grow too pale if she does not get into the open air. Take her on a pretty walk, Mäzli. You might go to Apollonie." Mäzli most willingly got her little hat, and the children set out. When they had passed half-way across the garden Mäzli suddenly stood still. "Oh, I forgot something," she said. "I have to go back again. Please wait for me, I won't be long." Mäzli disappeared but came back very shortly with a large picture-book under each arm. They were the biggest she had found and she had chosen them because she thought: The bigger the books, the bigger his delight at looking at them. "Now I'll tell you what I thought," she said on reaching Leonore. "You see, up in the castle under a big tree sits the sick Castle-Steward. I promised to go to see him soon again and to bring him a picture book. But I am bringing him two because he'll like two better. I also promised to bring you and something else besides. You don't know why he needs that other thing, but you will hear when we are up there. Let us go now." "But, Mäzli, I don't know the gentleman and he doesn't know me," Leonore began to object. "I can't go, because he might not like it. Besides your mother knows nothing about it." But Mäzli had not the slightest intention of giving up her expedition.