MELCHIOR--[_Seeing her, stops dead._] Is it really you, Wendla? What are you doing up here so all alone? I’ve been tramping up and down this wood for the last three hours without meeting a soul, and now all of a sudden you step out of the thickest covert at me! WENDLA--Yes, it’s I. MELCHIOR--If I didn’t know you were Wendla Bergmann I’d think you were a Dryad fallen out of the branches! WENDLA--No, no, I’m Wendla Bergmann.--Where have you come from? MELCHIOR--I’m following my thoughts. WENDLA--I’m looking for woodruff.[1] Mama wants to flavor May-wine with them. At first she was going to come too, but at the last moment Aunty Bauer turned up, and she doesn’t like to climb: so I came up here alone. MELCHIOR--Have you got your woodruff? WENDLA--The whole basket full. Over there under the beech-trees they’re as thick as meadow-clover. Just now I’m looking round for a way out. I seem to have got mixed up. Maybe you can tell me what time it is. MELCHIOR--Just after ha’ past three.--When do they expect you back? WENDLA--I thought it would be later. I lay a long time in the moss by the brook and dreamed. The time went by me so quickly, I was afraid it would soon be night. MELCHIOR--If nobody’s expecting you yet, let’s lie down here a little while. Under the oak there’s my favorite place. When you lean your head back against the trunk and stare thru the twigs at the sky, you get hypnotized. [_He does as he says._] The ground is still warm from the morning sun. [_She sits on a root._]--There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you for weeks, Wendla. WENDLA--But I must be at home before five. MELCHIOR--We’ll go in time together. I’ll take the basket and we’ll strike out thru the underbrush and get to the bridge in ten minutes. When one lies like this, with his forehead in his palm, one gets the strangest ideas.... WENDLA--What was it you wanted to ask me, Melchior? MELCHIOR--I’ve heard, Wendla, that you go a lot to poor people and take them things to eat and even clothes and money. Do you do that of your own accord or does your mother send you? WENDLA--Generally Mother sends me. There are poor laborers’ families with an awful lot of children. Often the man is out of work, and then they’re cold or go hungry. We have still such a lot of things left in cupboards and bureaus that we don’t need any longer.--But what made you think of it? MELCHIOR--Do you like to go, or not, when your mother sends you on such errands? WENDLA--Oh, I like to ever so much!--How can you ask? MELCHIOR--But the children are dirty, the women are sick, the rooms are alive with filth, the men hate you because you don’t work---- WENDLA--That isn’t true, Melchior,--and if it were true I’d go all the more! MELCHIOR--What do you mean, Wendla,--all the more? WENDLA--I’d go all the more for that: it would give me so much more pleasure to be able to help them! MELCHIOR--Oh, so you go to the poor people for the pleasure you get out of it! WENDLA--I go because they’re poor!