The two girls looked at each other in amazement. When Horny recounted to them the experience about which he had so long been reticent, they were walking up and down in the evening on the Sperber farm. "Why did he never tell us that before?" asked Röse, but she got no answer. "The Sperbers want us to take more notice of her," she continued; "and now it's really possible to do something with her. She's not so shy as she used to be, and one can talk quite sensibly with her. And she dislikes the same things we dislike. What pleases her best is to run about in the fields and work. Oh, but she's got a nice life of it!" "I don't know," said Marie--"all alone like that!" "Yes," said Horny again, "she has something about her that makes me think of a queen. She does what she pleases and thinks what she chooses. She lives her own life." "As if queens did that!" said Röse. "The kind of queens I mean," answered Horny, "may live in the Wünschgengasse or on the Ettersberg." "Oh, that sort of queens!" laughed Marie. "That's the only sort that's worth while! They must be young, and pure, and free, and joyous, and look every one straight and proudly in the eye." Röse and Marie were delighted. "We're three queens!" they called to Ernst von Schiller and Budang. "Come, we'll go and pay a visit to the third." So they all set off and went by a narrow path through a few fields and meadows, by a sand-pit, to the Rauchfuss farm, and found its young mistress sitting in the garden under the lime-tree, eating her supper. On the white-covered table was a bowl of sour milk from which she ladled some out every little while, and a loaf of fresh bread, and a plate of golden butter shining against the white cloth. "Oh, how nice," said Röse, "the way she has her supper!" And they were asked to share it, and presently each of them was sitting in front of a bowl of sour milk and cutting bread and spreading butter on it. To themselves they thought, "There, Frau Sperber will be waiting supper for us!" But they saw in their minds the good-natured friendly face of the old woman who, they knew, would not begrudge them their pleasure, and they said to themselves, "Who knows? When we get back there, perhaps well be hungry enough again to eat what she's got for us." When they had finished their supper, the most natural thing was to begin to dance under the blossom-laden lime-tree. It needed no long discussion to decide on this. "Off you go!" cried Röse. The couples paired off; singing or humming a tune, they swung round on the firm gravel. Tubby ran into the house when it began to grow dark and brought out a stable-lantern; for under the trees the light had faded when it was still only twilight in the garden. Then came the glow-worms and crawled about among the perfumed branches. The young creatures caught each other's hands and danced in circles under the dark old tree, now to the right, now to the left, without tiring.