And the sun was still agreeably warm
without burning, and an invigorating pungent odour streamed from the
golden-coloured leaves of the bushes that enclosed the gardens at the
back.

The man drew a deep breath; he felt as if he had suddenly grown ten,
twenty--no, thirty years younger. Even more.

"Well, run along," he said.

The boy looked at him as if he had not quite understood him.

"Run," he said once more curtly, smiling at the same time.

Then the boy gave a shout, such a shrill, triumphant shout that his
playfellows, who were crouching round the potato fire, joined in
immediately without knowing why.

There was a gleam in the dark eyes of the boy, who loved freedom,
the free air and to run about free. He did not say his father had made
him happy, but he drew a deep breath as if a load had fallen off his
chest. And the man noticed something in his face, that was now
commencing to grow coarser, to lose the soft contours of childhood and
get the sharp ones of youth, that made it refined and beautiful.

Wolfgang flew back across the field as quick as lightning, as if
shot from a tightly strung bow.

The man went back into his garden. He opened the gate cautiously so
that it should not creak, and closed it again just as quietly--Kate
need not know where he had been. But she was already standing at the
window.

There was something touchingly helpless in her attitude, such an
anxious scrutiny in her eyes--no, she need not look at him like that,
he was not angry with her.

And he nodded to her.

When the housemaid asked whether the master did not know where the
young gentleman was--she had had the milk warmed three times already
for him and had run up and downstairs with it--he said in a low voice
with an excuse in the tone: "Oh, that does not matter, Lisbeth. Warm it
for a fourth time later on. It is so healthy for him to be out of
doors."

BOOK II

CHAPTER VIII

It was Frida Laemke's birthday. "If you may come we are to have buns
with raisins in, but if you mayn't there'll only be rolls like we have
every day," she said to her friend Wolfgang. "Mind you get them to let
you come." It was of most importance to her that Wolfgang came; no
differences were made on account of Flebbe, although he always said he
was going to marry her.

And Wolfgang teased his mother. "Let me go--why not? I should like
to so much--why mayn't I?"

Yes, why not? He had kept dinning this "why not?" into her ea