"Of course." She nodded, and her clear merry laugh was heard once
more, although there were still traces of tears on her face. "That
would be a nice sort of friendship, if it disappeared so quickly.
There!" She pursed up her mouth and gave him a kiss.

He looked very embarrassed; she had never given him a kiss
before.

"There!" She gave him another one. "And now be happy again, my boy.
It's such beautiful weather."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"You're late to-day," said his mother, when Wolfgang came home from
school at two instead of at one o'clock. "You've not been kept, I
hope?"

A feeling of indignation rose in him: how she supervised him. The
good temper in which his friend Frida had put him had disappeared; the
chains galled him again. But he still thought a good deal of Frida.
When he was doing his lessons in the afternoon, her head with its thick
knot of hair would constantly appear behind his desk, and bend over his
book and interrupt him; but it was a pleasant interruption. What a pity
that Frida had so little time now. How nice it had been when they were
children. He had always been most fond of her; he had been able to play
better with her than with the two boys, she had always understood him
and stuck to him--alas!

He felt as though he must envy, from the bottom of his heart, the
boy who had been the captain when they played at robbers in those days
and roasted potatoes in the ashes, nay, even the boy who had once been
so ill that they had to wheel him in a bath-chair the first time he
went out into the open air. The boy who sat at the desk now, staring
absently into space over the top of his exercise-book, was no longer
the same. He was no longer a child. All at once it seemed to Wolfgang
as though a golden time had gone for ever and lay far behind him, as
though there were no pleasures in store for him. Had not the clergyman
who was preparing him for confirmation also said: "You are no longer
children"? And had he not gone on to say: "You will soon have your
share of life's gravity"? Alas, he already had it.

Wolfgang sat with knit brows, the chewed end of his penholder
between his teeth, disinclined to work. He was brooding. All manner of
thoughts occurred to him that he had never had before; all at
once words came into his mind that he had never thought of seriously
before. Why did the boys in his form constantly ask him such strange
questions? They asked abo