MRS. BERGMANN--You’re fourteen years old to-day! WENDLA--If I had known you were going to make my dress so long, I’d rather not have been fourteen. MRS. BERGMANN--It isn’t too long, Wendla. What do you want? Can I help my girl’s growing two inches taller every spring? A girl as grown up as you can’t go round in a little princess-dress! WENDLA--All the same, my little princess-dress looks better on me than that nightgown. Let me wear it just once more, mother! Just this summer! That penitence-frock will suit me just as well at fifteen as at fourteen: let’s hang it up till my =next= birthday! Now I’d only tread on the braid. MRS. BERGMANN--I don’t know what I ought to say. I’d like so much to keep you this way, child,--just as you are. Other girls are overgrown and awkward at your age. You’re just the opposite. Who knows what you will be like when the others are fully developed? WENDLA--Who knows? Perhaps I shan’t =be= at all. MRS. BERGMANN--Child, child, what makes you think such things! WENDLA--Don’t, mother dear; oh, don’t be sad. MRS. BERGMANN--[_Kissing her._] My only darling! WENDLA--They come to me so, night-times, when I can’t go to sleep. They don’t make me a bit sad, and I know I sleep better afterwards. Is it wrong, mother, to think about things like that? MRS. BERGMANN--Go, dear, and hang the “penitence-frock” away, and put on your princess-dress again, God bless you! When I get the chance I’ll put another breadth of ruffles on the bottom of it. WENDLA--[_Hanging the dress in the wardrobe._] No! Then I might as well be all of twenty right away! MRS. BERGMANN--If only you don’t get too cold. In its time that little dress was plenty long enough for you, but now---- WENDLA--Now, with summer coming? Oh, mother, not even little children get diphtheria in their knees! Why are you so scary? At my age nobody freezes, least of all in the legs. Do you think it would be better if I got too hot, mother? Thank the good God if your darling doesn’t cut off her sleeves some morning and come to you at twilight without her shoes and stockings!--When I wear my penitence-frock I’ll dress like a fairy queen under it.... Don’t scold, motherkin,--nobody’ll see how, then! CURTAIN SCENE II.--_Sunday evening. A gravel walk in front of a park bench; shrubbery and tree-tops behind. MELCHIOR enters, followed by the other boys_. MELCHIOR--I’m tired of that: I don’t want to any more. OTTO--Then the rest of us can just as well stop, too. Have you done your work, Melchior? MELCHIOR--Go on playing, why don’t you! MORITZ--Where are you going? MELCHIOR--For a walk. GEORGE--It’ll be dark soon. ROBERT--Have you done your work already? MELCHIOR--And why shouldn’t I go for a walk in the dark? ERNEST--Central America!--Louis XV!--Sixty lines of Homer!--Seven equations! MELCHIOR--Damn the work! GEORGE--Oh, if only Latin Comp. didn’t come to-morrow! MORITZ--One can’t think of anything without some work coming in between!