aud should suffer me, the daughter of a
noble house, to mix with the low born race of a simple scrivener; but
in sooth Ann was more like by far to get harm in our house, among my
brethren and their fellows, than I in the peaceful home by the river,
where none but seemly speech was ever heard and sweet singing, nor ever
seen but labor and good order and content.

Right glad was I to tarry there; but yet how good it was when Ann got
leave to come to us for the whole of Sunday from noon till eventide;
when we would first sit and chatter and play alone together, and talk
over all we had done in school; thereafter we had my brothers with
us, and would go out to take the air under the care of my cousin or of
Magister Peter, or abide at home to sing or have merry pastime.

After the Ave Maria, the old organist, Adam Heyden, Ann's grand uncle,
would come to seek her, and many sweet memories dwell in my mind of
that worthy and gifted man, which I might set down were it not that I
am Ann's debtor for so many things that made my childhood happy. It was
she, for a certainty, who first taught me truly to play; for whereas my
dolls, and men-at-arms and shop games, albeit they were small, were in
all points like the true great ones, she had but a staff of wood wrapped
round with a kerchief which she rocked in her arms for a babe; and
when she played a shop game with the little ones, she marked stones
and leaves to be their wares and their money, and so found far greater
pastime than we when we played with figs and almonds and cloves out of
little wooden chests and linen-cloth sacks, and weighed them with
brass weights on little scales with a tongue and string. It was she
who brought imagination to bear on my pastimes, and many a time has
she borne my fancy far enough from the Pegnitz, over seas and rivers to
groves of palm and golden fairy lands.

Our fellowship with my brethren was grateful to her as it was to me; but
meseems it was a different thing in those early years from what it was
in later days. While I write a certain summer day from that long past
time comes back to my mind strangely clear. We had played long enough in
our chamber, and we found it too hot in the loft under the roof, where
we had climbed on to the beams, which were great, so we went down into
the garden. Herdegen had quitted us in haste after noon, and we found
none but Kunz, who was shaping arrows for his cross-bow. But he ere long
threw away his knife and