"Good-morning, master. Ernst was certainly right when he told me that it is lovely here. One can see so far in every direction. I shall yet climb every one of those hills. How good the water is! Do you, too, hear the cuckoo? He is already awake, and has bid me good-morning. Old Jaegerlies[2] has often told me that I was the cuckoo's child. And do you know that the cow got a calf during the night? A spotted cow-calf? We have already given the cow something warm to drink. The calf drank milk when it was hardly two minutes old. Rothfuss said it would be a pity to kill the calf. I am going to drive out into the fields with Rothfuss to get some clover. Yes, a cow has a good time of it in your house. But look! the cuckoo is flying over your house! That is an omen!"
She went to the stable, and I followed her a short time afterwards. She looked on dreamily while the cow was licking the new-born calf, and said at last,
"That is what you folks call kissing."
Rothfuss asked her:
"Are you fond of cows?"
"I don't know; I never had one."
He showed her our best cow and said,
"Three years ago, when she was a calf, she got the first prize at the agricultural exhibition. She puts food to the best use. Everything that she eats turns either to meat or to milk."
Rothfuss told Martella to put on a little jacket. They soon drove out to the fields, and when she held up the scythe, she exclaimed, "Cuckoo!" It seemed to me as if I were dreaming, and yet I remembered quite distinctly that my wife had spoken to me on the previous night of the cuckoo's young ones.
What a strange coincidence it seemed!