No one ventured to exert any influence over her; but the Doctor agreed with Pranken and her father, that she must again ride on horseback.
A new world seemed to be disclosed; inside the house, there was singing, dancing, playing, and outside, too, all went merry as a marriage-bell. Manna took pleasant rides on horseback with Pranken, Eric, and Roland in the country round. Sonnenkamp also, mounted on his great black horse, frequently joined the party. Their ride was full of enjoyment, and they received on all sides marks of respect, not only from those who had been the recipients of benefits through the Professorin and Fräulein Milch, but also from those who were well off and independent in their circumstances. Wherever they alighted, and wherever they reined up, there was always some fresh proof of the pride which the whole region felt in such a man as Sonnenkamp.
One day Manna, Pranken, and Roland, Eric and Sonnenkamp, were riding along the road bordered with nut-trees.
"Herr Dournay is right," exclaimed Manna, who was riding in advance with Pranken and her father.
Manna said that Eric had made the remark, that nut-trees were much more beautiful, and that it was a stupid and prosaic innovation to set out lindens and other common trees along the roads; that the nut-tree belonged to the Rhine, was beautiful and productive, and at least gave to the irrepressible boys a fine harvest time.
As she rode along she tore off a leaf of a nut-tree.
For some time her voice had been different; it was no longer as if veiled with tears. Turning to her father, she continued:—
"You can bring this about. Set out a nursery of nut-trees, and give to all the villages round as many nurslings as they can make use of."
Sonnenkamp promised to carry out the idea, and unfolded a plan which he had much at heart, of establishing general benevolent institutions, the first of which should be a fund for the widows and orphans of boatmen.
Manna stroked her beautiful white pony, to which she had given the name Snowdrop.