"Mousie, Mousie! Do not go away! Ask Windekind what I must do with my key. I have hung it around my neck, on my bare breast. But Saturday I have to take a bath, and I am so afraid somebody will see it. Tell me, Mousie dear, where I can safely hide it." "In the ground--always in the ground. Everything is safest there. Shall I take, and keep it?" "No, not here, at school!" "Bury it then, out in the dunes. I will tell my cousin, the field-mouse, that he must keep watch of it." "Thank you, Mousie." Tramp! tramp! The master was coming. In the time it took Johannes to dip his pen, the mouse had disappeared. The master himself, who was impatient to go home, excused Johannes from the forty-eight remaining lines. For two long days Johannes lived in constant fear. He was closely watched, and no opportunity was allowed him for escaping to the dunes. Friday came, and he was still carrying around that precious key. The following evening he must take his weekly bath; the key would be discovered and taken away from him. He grew stiff with fear at the thought of it. He dared not hide it in the house--nor in the garden--no place seemed to him safe enough. It was Friday afternoon and the twilight began to fall. Johannes sat before his bedroom window, looking wistfully out over the green shrubs of the garden to the distant dunes. "Windekind, Windekind, help me!" he whispered, anxiously. There was a gentle rustling of wings near him, then came the fragrance of lilies-of-the-valley, and suddenly he heard the sweet, familiar voice. Windekind sat near him on the window-seat, making the little lily-bells swing on their slender stalk. "At last! Have you come? I have longed for you so!" said Johannes. "Come with me, Johannes; we will go and bury your key." "I cannot," said Johannes, with a sigh. But Windekind took him by the hand, and, light as the feathery seed of a dandelion, he was drifting away through the still evening air. "Windekind," said Johannes as they went, "I think so much of you! I believe I would willingly give up every human being for you. Presto, even." "And Simon?" said Windekind. "Oh, it cannot make much difference to Simon whether I like him or not. He thinks such things childish, I believe. Simon cares only for the fishwoman; and not even for her, save when he is hungry. Do you believe, Windekind, that Simon is an ordinary cat?" "No! He has been a human being." Buz-z-z-z! Just then a big May-bug flew against Johannes. "Cannot you look out for yourself better than that?" grumbled the May-bug. "H'm! You elfin baggage! You fly as if you owned all the air there was. You have learned that from the do-nothings who only just fly round and round for their own pleasure. One who always does his duty, like me--who always seeks food, and eats as hard as he can, is put out by such actions." And away he flew, buzzing loudly. "Is he vexed because we are not eating anything?" asked Johannes.