can't go to sleep again," she answered. "See, I'm quite awake, and
it's no use trying. And with the sun so high too! No; you shall send me
to bed an hour or two earlier to-night, and to-morrow morning will find
me as brisk as a bee. I've so much to hear, and so much to tell, that
to sleep again before dusk is out of the question."

So she arose; and they went all three and sat down in the little garden.
Luise eyed eagerly every flower and every fruit-tree, and had something
to say about every change since she had been there last. But ever and
anon she would look earnestly into the faces of her parents--and never
without something like a tear in her large lustrous eyes.

Of course, they questioned her upon this. And she, who had never
concealed a thought or a wish from _them_, told them in her own frank,
artless way, why she looked sorrowful when she first saw them, after a
prolonged separation, and how it was that, in her sleep, thoughts had
visited her which were messengers of peace and gladness--whose message
it had saddened her to find, on waking, but airy and unreal.

At Seville she had been as happy as kindness and care could make one so
far from and so fond of home. But a childish fancy, she said, had
troubled her--childish she knew, and a thing to be ashamed of, but
haunting her none the less--visiting her sleeping and waking hours; a
feeling it was of dejection at the idea of her parents growing old, and
of change and chance breaking up the wonted calm of her little household
circle. That the march of Time should be so irresistible, that his
flight could not be stayed or slackened by pope or kaiser, that his
decrees should be so immutable, his destiny so inexorable, and that the
youngest must soon cease to be young, and the middle-aged become old--or
die! this was the thought that preyed on her very soul. She could not
endure the conviction that her own father must one day walk with a less
elastic step, and smile on her with eyes ever loving indeed, but more
and more dimmed with age--and that her own mother must one day move to
and fro with tottering gait, and speak with the tremulous accents of
those old people who, it seemed to Luise, could never have been children
at all. It was a weak, fantastic thought, this; but she could not master
it, nor escape its presence.

And when she met them on the threshold of the beloved home--ah, the
absentee's rapid glance saw a wrinkle on her father's cheek that was new
to