It was a sunny forenoon in June. The white sand on the road glittered; round about golden hawkweed was blooming and meadowsweet waved in the warm wind; the midday bell sounded from the village; no human creature was to be seen far and wide; the heath seemed quite deserted.
Elsbeth wore a wide-brimmed straw-hat on her head as a protection against the sun’s rays. She took it off now, and swung it to and fro by the elastic.
“You will be too hot,” he said; but as she laughed at him a little he took his off also and threw it high in the air.
“You are quite a merry fellow,” she said, nodding approvingly.
He shook his head, and the lines of care which always made him look old appeared again upon his brow.
“Oh no,” he said; “merry I am certainly not.”
“I have always so many things to think of,” he answered, “and if ever I want to be really happy something always goes wrong.”
“But what do you always have to think about?” she asked.
He reflected for a while, but nothing occurred to him. “Oh, it is all nonsense,” he said; “clever thoughts never come to me, by any means.”
And then he told her about his brothers, of the thick books, which were quite filled with figures (the name he had forgotten), and which they had already known by heart when they were only as old as he was now.
“Why don’t you learn that as well, if it gives you pleasure?” she asked.
“But it gives me no pleasure,” he answered; “I have such a dull head.”
“But _something_ you know, surely?” she went on.
“I know absolutely nothing at all,” he replied, sadly; “father says that I am too stupid.”
“Oh, you must not heed that,” she replied, consolingly. “My Fraulein Rothmaier also finds fault with many things I do. But I--pah, I--” she was silent, and pulled up a sorrel-plant which she began to chew.
“Has your father still such sparkling eyes?” he asked.
She looked at him wonderingly, as if she had not understood his question, then answered, “Oh yes; I love him very much.”
Now he also rooted up a sorrel-plant and sighed.
Something was just crossing his mind, he said, and then asked, laughingly, if her father still took her on his knee sometimes, as on the day when he had been in the White House.
She laughed and said she was a big girl now, and he should not ask such silly questions; but afterwards it came out that all the same she still sat on her father’s knee--“Of course, not astride any more!” she added, laughing.