o notice of her work.
"Helene does not love good music," said I; "'tis her only fault. But I
trust that you, dear Katrin, have a greater taste for angelic song?"

"And I trust you love to scratch upon the twangling zither as cats
sharpen their claws upon the bark of trees? You love such music, _dear_
Katrin, do you not?" cried Helene over her shoulder from the window.

But Katrin, the divine cow, knew not what to make of us. I think she was
of the opinion that Helene and I, with much study upon books, had
suddenly gone mad.

"I do indeed love music," she said at last, uncertainly, "but, Master
Hugo, not the kind of which my gossip, Helene, speaks. I love best of all
a ballad of love, sung sweetly and with a melting expression, as from a
lover by the wall to his mistress aloft in the balcony, like that of him
of Italy, who sings:

"'O words that fall like summer dew on me.'

"How goes it?

"'O breath more sweet than is the growing--the growing--'"

She paused, and waved her hand as if to summon the words from the
empty air.

"'_The growing garlic,'_ if it be a lover of Italy," cried Helene, still
more spitefully. "This is enough and to spare of chivalry, besides which
Hugo hath his lessons to learn for Friar Laurence, or else he will repent
it on the morrow. Come, sweetheart, let us be going. I will e'en convoy
thee home."

So she spoke, making great ostentation of her own superiority and
emancipation from learning, treating me as a lad that must learn his
horn-book at school.

But I was even with her for all that.

"And so farewell, then, dear Mistress Katrin," said I. "The delicate
pleasure of your presence shall be followed by the still more tender
remembrance which, when you are gone, my heart shall continue to
cherish of you."

That was indeed well-minded. A whole sentence out of my romance-book
without a single slip. Katrin bowed, with the airy grace of the Grand
Duke's monument out in the square. But the little Helene swept
majestically off, muttering to herself, but so that I could hear her: "'O
wondrous, most wondrous,' quoth our cat Mall, when she saw her Tom
betwixt her and the moon."

The application of which wise saw is indeed to seek.

So the two maids went away, and I betook me to the window to see if I
could catch a glimpse of Christian's Elsa.

But I only saw Katrin and Helene going gossiping down the street with
their heads very close together.

At first I smiled, well pleased to t