ask? We talk, and we sing, and we take a walk."

"What do you talk about?"

"Well," she cried, laughing gayly, "to the end of my days I wouldn't
have expected to be asked such a question! We haven't much trouble
about that: have we, uncle? My playmate, Buchmaier's Agnes, will be
here directly, and then you'll stop asking what we talk about: she
knows enough for a cow."

"But haven't you ever read any thing?"

"Oh, yes,--the hymn-book and the Bible-stories."

"Nothing else?"

"And the Flower-Basket, and Rosa of Tannenburg."

"And what else?"

"And Rinaldo Rinaldini. Now you know all," said the girl, brushing off
her apron with her hands, as if she had poured out her entire stock of
erudition at the teacher's feet.

"What did you like best?"

"Rinaldo Rinaldini. What a pity it is he was a robber!"

"I will bring you some books with much prettier stories in them."

"I'd rather you'd tell us one; but it must be grizzly and awful. Wait
till Agnes comes: she does like to hear them so much."

At this moment a boy came to tell the old teacher that Beck's Conrad
had just received a new waltz, and that he must come with his violin to
play it. He rose quickly, wished the visitors "pleasant conversation,"
and went away.

The teacher's heart trembled on finding himself alone with Hedwig: he
had not the courage to look up. At last he said, almost to himself,
"What a good old man he is!"

"Yes," said Hedwig; "and you must learn to know him. You must not be
touchy with him: he's a little short and cross to all teachers, because
he was put out of office, and so he seems to think every teacher that
comes here after him is to blame for it; and yet how can they help it,
when the consistory sends them? He is old, you see; and we must be
patient with old folks."

The teacher grasped her hand and looked tenderly into her eyes: this
loving appreciation of another's feelings won his heart. Suddenly a
dead bird fell at their feet. They started. Hedwig soon bent down and
picked up the bird.

"He is quite warm yet," said she. "The poor little thing was sick, and
nobody could help it: it's only a lark; but still it's a living thing."

"One is tempted to think," said the teacher, "that a bird that always
mounts heavenward, singing, must fall straight into heaven when it
dies, it soars so freely over the earth; and yet, at death's approach,
every thing that rose out of the earth must sink into it again."

Hedwig opened her ey