in.

"Great laws must be made, Dame, and these who make them must keep away
from these stinging gnats."

"I know that well," said the Dame, and looked straight at her, "but I,
thank God, need never make great laws, but only teach my household to
obey them."

She sighed, but spoke again.

"It is not only laws, Dame, but beautiful things the world over must not
be disturbed in the making. You could not make a great picture or a
great song with Roger and Grizel pulling you here and there."

"And that is true, too," the Dame said, "but I need not make great
songs, thank God, but only teach them to my children."

"And still there must be great songs," she said.

"And still there must be great children," said the Dame.

"I know, I know!" she cried, and pressed her hands to her forehead. "I
learned that once--in a deep wood. And I have the children. But I would
make great pictures, too. Not instead of the children, but with them,
Dame, with them!"

"You cannot, nor any other woman," said the Dame, and turned to her
knitting.

"But if I tried, if I tried ..." she pleaded.

"It is not by trying that these things are done," said the Dame coldly,
"Lotte will not lift the load of russets yonder though she break her
back at it, little fool. See, now she is so tired that Hans must carry
both them and her."

"She is a country girl," said the pale woman, eagerly.

"Outside and inside she is made after the pattern of yourself and all
other women," said the Dame, "and the one truth is true for us all."

"Good Dame," she said, after a moment, while the wagons creaked through
the orchard and the girls laughed as the sun slipped lower, "what if I
strove no more for greatness, but only made me little pictures to
pleasure a few that love me and myself?"

"Why, as for that," said the Dame more kindly--"have a care there,
Roger, you will hurt your sister if you play too roughly with her!--as
for that, I can see no harm in it. Neither can I see how it should be
worth any woman's while, if the thing be not great, and she knows it. It
is a child's game."

"That is true," she said bitterly, "though how you should know it who
pass your days on a petty farm, far from the great world, I cannot see."

"If you come to my time of life, my dear, and still think that the world
is great or petty by so much as it is near a farm or far from it, you
will not be having much content in your old age," said the Dame. "Now I
must put my mind u