come between them! As a matter of fact, they were a model couple." The
only one who remained calm during the welcoming scene was Rollo
himself, who either had no appreciation of time or considered the
separation as an irregularity which was now simply removed. The fact
that he had grown old also had something to do with it, no doubt. He
remained sparing with his demonstrations of affection as he had been
with his evidences of joy, during the welcoming scene. But he had
grown in fidelity, if such a thing were possible. He never left the
side of his mistress. The hunting dog he treated benevolently, but as
a being of a lower order. At night he lay on the rush mat before
Effi's door; in the morning, when breakfast was served out of doors by
the sundial, he was always quiet, always sleepy, and only when Effi
arose from the breakfast table and walked toward the hall to take her
straw hat and umbrella from the rack, did his youth return. Then,
without troubling himself about whether his strength was to be put to
a hard or easy test, he ran up the village road and back again and did
not calm down till they were out in the fields. Effi, who cared more
for fresh air than for landscape beauty, avoided the little patches of
forest and usually kept to the main road, which 'at first was bordered
with very old elms and then, where the turnpike began, with poplars.
This road led to the railway station about an hour's walk away. She
enjoyed everything, breathing in with delight the fragrance wafted to
her from the rape and clover fields, or watching the soaring of the
larks, and counting the draw-wells and troughs, to which the cattle
went to drink. She could hear a soft ringing of bells that made her
feel as though she must close her eyes and pass away in sweet
forgetfulness. Near the station, close by the turnpike, lay a road
roller. This was her daily resting place, from which she could observe
what took place on the railroad. Trains came and went and sometimes
she could see two columns of smoke which for a moment seemed to blend
into one and then separated, one going to the right, the other to the
left, till they disappeared behind the village and the grove. Rollo
sat beside her, sharing her lunch, and when he had caught the last
bite, he would run like mad along some plowed furrow, doubtless to
show his gratitude, and stop only when a pair of pheasants scared from
their nest flew up from a neighboring furrow close by him.

"How b