a single one
of those who had refused to walk! If either of them had occupied
Gertrud's place and driven with me would she not, after the way of
women, have spent the first half of the time telling me her secrets and
the other half being angry with me because I knew them? And then
Gertrud, after having kept quiet all day, would burst into activities at
night, unpack the hold-all, produce pleasant things like slippers, see
that my bed was as I like it, and end by tucking me up in it and going
away on tiptoe with her customary quaint benediction, bestowed on me
every night at bedtime: 'The dear God protect and bless the gracious
one,' says Gertrud as she blows out the candle.

'And may He also protect and bless thee,' I reply; and could as ill
spare my pillow as her blessing.

It was half-past two in the afternoon of the middle Friday in July when
we left the station officials to go back to their dull work and trotted
round the corner into the wide world. The sky was a hot blue. The road
wound with gentle ups and downs between fields whitening to harvest.
High over our heads the larks quivered in the light, shaking out that
rapturous song that I can never hear without a throb of gratitude for
being alive. There were no woods or hills, and we could see a long way
on either side, see the red roofs of farms clustered wherever there was
a hollow to protect them from the wild winds of winter, see the straight
double line of trees where the high road to Stralsund cut across ours,
see a little village a mile ahead of us with a venerable church on a
mound in the middle of it gravely presiding over the surrounding wide
parish of corn. I think I must have got out at least six times during
the short drive between Miltzow and the ferry pretending I wanted
flowers, but really to enjoy the delight of loitering. The rye was full
of chickory and poppies, the ditches along the road where the spring
dampness still lingered were white with the delicate loveliness of
cow-parsley, that most spiritual of weeds. I picked an armful of it to
hold up against the blue of the sky while we were driving; I gave
Gertrud a bunch of poppies for which she thanked me without enthusiasm;
I put little posies of chickory at the horses' ears; in fact I felt and
behaved as if I were fifteen and out for my first summer holiday. But
what did it matter? There was nobody there to see.

Stahlbrode is the most innocent-looking place--a small cluster of
cottages on