not asked your permission whether I might join you or not. On the
whole, it was not to _you_ that I was thinking whether I should come,
or otherwise. I have laid all my opponents prostrate in the dust in
knightly play, and what I wanted to do was to ask this beautiful lady
if she would not mind giving me, as my guerdon, those flowers which she
wears in her breast." With which Conrad knelt on one knee before Rosa,
looked her honestly in the face with his clear brown eyes, and
petitioned, "Give me the flowers, if you will be so kind, fair Rosa;
you can hardly refuse me." Rosa at once took the flowers from her
breast, and gave them to him, saying, with a smile, "I am sure such a
doughty knight deserves a prize of honour from a woman; so take my
flowers, although they are beginning to wither a little." Conrad kissed
them, and placed them in his barret cap; but Master Martin rose up
crying, "Stupid stuff and nonsense! Let's get away home; it'll soon be
dark." Martin walked first; Conrad, in a courtier-like fashion, gave
Rosa his arm, and Reinhold and Friedrich brought up the rear, not in
the best of temper. The people who met them stopped and looked after
them, saying:

"Ey! look there!--that is Master Martin, the rich cooper, with his
pretty daughter and his fine journeymen; happy folks, these, I can tell
you!"

HOW FRAU MARTHA CONVERSED WITH ROSA ABOUT THE THREE JOURNEYMEN.
CONRAD'S QUARREL WITH MASTER MARTIN.

Young girls are wont to live over again all the enjoyments of a festal
day, in detail, on the subsequent morning, and this secondary feast
seems then almost more delicious to them than the original itself. Thus
did the fair Rosa sit pondering on the subsequent morning alone in her
chamber, with her hands folded in her lap, and her head hung down in
reverie, letting spindle and needle-work rest. Probably she was
mentally listening again to Reinhold and Friedrich's singing, and again
watching the athletic Conrad vanquishing his adversaries, and receiving
from her the victor's prize. Now and then she would hum a line or two
of some song; then she would say, "My flowers, do you want?" and then a
deeper crimson mantled in her cheeks; flashes darted through her
half-closed eyelids, faint sighs stole forth from her innermost breast.

Frau Martha came in, and Rosa was delighted to have the opportunity of
giving her a circumstantial account of all that had happened in Saint
Catherine's Church, and