ing's sake, as if they all had something else at the bottom of their
minds all the time; as if the work was a sort of task which they had
taken up of their own accords, and were sticking to as well as they
could, against the grain. I get on best with Friedrich. He is a nice,
straight-forward fellow. He seems more like _us_, somehow. One
understands whatever he says. And what I like about him is, that he
loves you in such a silent sort of way, with all the bashfulness of a
good child; that he hardly dares to look at you, and blushes whenever
you say a word to him."

A tear came to Rosa's eye. She rose, turned to the window, and said:
"Yes, I am very fond of Friedrich too; but you mustn't think too little
of Reinhold, either."

"How should I?" said Martha; "he's the nicest-looking of them all, by
far and away. When he looks one through and through, with his eyes like
lightning, one can hardly bear it. Still, there is a something about
him so strange and wonderful, that I feel a little inclined to draw
back from him in a sort of awe. I think the master must feel, when he
is at work in the workshop, as I should if somebody brought a lot of
pots and pans all sparkling with gold and jewels into my kitchen, and I
had to set to work with them as if they were so many ordinary pots and
pans. I shouldn't dare to touch them. He talks, and tells tales, and it
all sounds like beautiful music, and carries one away. But when I think
seriously about what he has been saying after he has done, I haven't
understood a word of it, really. And then, when he will sometimes joke
and jest just like one of ourselves, and I think he is only one of us
after all, all of a sudden he will look up at one so proudly, and seem
such a gentleman, that one feels frightened. It is not that he ever
swaggers, as plenty of the young gentlefolks do; it's something quite
different. In one word, it strikes me--God forgive me for saying
it!--that he must have dealing with higher powers; as if he really
belonged to another world altogether, Conrad is a rough, overbearing
sort of fellow, but he has something cursedly aristocratic about him,
too, which doesn't go a bit well with the cooper's apron; and he goes
on as if it were his place to give orders, which everybody else had to
obey. In the little time that he has been here, you see he has got so
far that even Master Martin himself has to obey him, when he roars at
him with that thundering voice of his. But then, a