At these words the girl paled with shame and annoyance. Without another syllable she turned away and joined once more the throng of merrymakers, where she danced and sprang about recklessly a few times, and then sat down a little distance away by herself, with a face that betrayed clearly how hurt she was at the rebuff. The chief forester's wife smilingly stroked the strict young moralist's cheek, saying: "Well, well, you are certainly very strict. But the more faithfully you will one day take care of my child. Give me your promise never to desert her! Only don't forget, we Seldwyla folk are all of us rather gay and debonair, and it is possible that in being so we sometimes do not think enough of the future." Dietegen's eyes grew wet, and he gave her his hand in solemn vow. Then she conducted him back to the others. But Kuengolt turned her back on him, and instead in real grief gazed into the mild May night. He on his part now marveled at himself. Strange, now of a sudden this girl whom but a minute before he had misnomed a mere child, was old and grown-up enough to cause him, the moralizing youth, love pangs. For sad and confused he too stood now aside and felt still more ashamed than the girl herself. "What ails you? Why do you look so sorrowful?" asked the forester, when he in the best humor in the world now approached the group. But Kuengolt at the question broke into passionate tears, and exclaimed before everybody: "He was a gift to me by the judges when he was really nothing but a poor lifeless corpse, and I have reawakened him to life. And therefore he has no right to sit in judgment on me, but rather I alone am his judge. And he must do everything I want, and when I love to kiss him it is his business to simply keep still and let me do it." They all laughed at this odd statement, but the mother took Dietegen's hand and led him to the child, saying: "Come, make up with her and let her kiss you once more. Later on you, also, shall be her master, and shall do as you see fit in such matters." Blushing deeply because of the many onlookers, Dietegen offered his mouth to the girl, and she seized him by his curls, quite in a frenzy, and kissed him hard, more in wrath than in love, and then, having once more thrown him a look that betrayed anger, she quickly turned on her heels and dashed away in such haste that her golden ringlets fluttered in the night air and in passing brushed his face.