While he is superintending the storing of the grain on the gallery, some one from below gently pulls his coat-tail. He looks down;--Trude, with sun-heated face and sparkling eyes, stands on the steps and invites him to come to breakfast. "In a minute," he says, finishes his task and jumps down. "Brr!" she says, shaking herself, "how you look! "What's the matter? "Well--yesterday I liked you better." Then she gives him her hand with a "good-morning," and trips down the stairs in front of him, strewing the flour about for fun as she goes. When they get to the door of the partition that Martin called his office, she pulls a mysterious face and raises her hand silently as if to lay a ghost. Then after a moment she asks: "I say, what has he got in there!" "I don't know." "Mayn't you go in either?" "No." "Thank goodness! Then I am not the only one who's kept in the dark. In there he sits, and every stranger is allowed to go in to him, only not I. If I want him, I have to ring.--Say yourself whether that's nice of him? Surely I am no longer such a child that he should--well, I won't say anything,--one oughtn't to speak ill of one's husband--but you are his own brother--do put in a good word for me, so that he tells me what is in there. For I am dying to know." "Do you suppose he has told me?" "Well, then we must comfort each other. Come along."--And in one jump she flies up the three steps leading to the entrance. During breakfast she suddenly puts on a serious air and speaks grandly of her weighty household cares. Of course, she says, she had to be independent at home already, for her poor little mother died many years past, and she had to superintend her father's household long before she was confirmed; but it was only a small one, for her father had to manage with one apprentice and almost worked himself to death--poor father! Her eyes are full of tears. She is ashamed and turns away. Then she jumps up and asks: "Have you had enough?" And when he says "Yes," she continues: "Come along into the garden. There's an arbor which is splendid for a chat." "That one at the end of the long path?--that is my favorite place too." Side by side they stroll through the mazy garden walks, all bathed in glowing sunlight, and both feel relieved when they reach the cool shade of the leafy recess. She throws herself down carelessly on the grassy bank and puts her plump, sun-burnt arms under her head. Through the dense foliage stray gleams of sunlight break, painting her dress with golden patches, playing on her neck and face, and passing over her head till they make her curly brown hair all aglow. Johannes sits down opposite her and gazes at her with undisguised admiration. He is convinced that never before in his life has he seen so much loveliness as there in the half-reclining figure of his charming young sister-in-law, and he thinks of his brother's saying: "Was it possible for me not to love her?"