the old man, whose handsome white head she had always particularly
admired, had spied her out among the boughs of his peach-tree and had
advised her, with a good-natured nod, to enjoy herself there.

"A child!" repeated Rufinus. "And now we are quite grown up and do not
care to climb so high, but creep humbly through our neighbor's hedge."

"Then you really are strangers?" cried Paula in surprise. "And have you
never met Pulcheria, Katharina?"

"Pul?--oh, how glad I should have been to call her!" said Katharina.
"I have been on the point of it a hundred times; for her mere appearance
makes one fall in love with her,--but my mother. . . ."

"Well, and what has your mother got to say against her neighbors?" asked
Rufinus. "I believe we are peaceable folks who do no one any harm."

"No, no, God forbid! But my mother has her own way of viewing things;
you and she are strangers still, and as you are so rarely to be seen in
church. . . ."

"She naturally takes us for the ungodly. Tell her that she is mistaken,
and if you are Paula's friend and you come to see her--but prettily,
through the gate, and not through the hedge, for it will be closely
twined again by to-morrow morning--if you come here, I say, you will find
that we have a great deal to do and a great many creatures to nurse and
care for--poor human creatures some of them, and some with fur or
feathers, just as it comes; and man serves his Maker if he only makes
life easier to the beings that come in his way; for He loves them all.
Tell that to your mother, little wagtail, and come again very often."