They went into the flower garden and gathered many different kinds of flowers, but Lilian threw a large bunch of them into the brook, and pleased herself with thinking how the flowers would float down to the Rhine, and from the Rhine to the sea, and who knows but they would go straight to New York, even before she got there herself!
"I shall come to America, too, to see you," Roland all at once exclaimed.
"Give me your hand that you will."
For the first time, the children took each other by the hand.
A shot was heard behind them. Roland trembled.
"Just be quiet. Are you really frightened?" Lilian said, soothingly. "It's aunt; she's only frightening away the sparrows; she fires every time she comes into the orchard. A pistol is always lying upon the table yonder."
Roland now saw Frau Weidmann putting the discharged pistol down on the table.
"We'll be perfectly quiet, so that she won't hear us," he said to Lilian.
They sat down on the margin of the brook, and Lilian whispered:—
"The mignonettes I'll keep, they smell so sweet, even after they're wilted."