It was fortunate that there were no street boys in the Grunewald colony, as Wölfchen would assuredly have played with them; as it was, his playfellows were only a hall-porter's children. There was certainly no want of nicer children to play with; school-fellows whose parents lived in similar villas to theirs used to invite him; and the families in Berlin, with whom the Schliebens were on friendly terms and who were pleased when their children could get out to the Grunewald on their holidays, often asked him to come and see them too.
All children liked to come to the shady garden, where Auntie Käte was always so kind to them. There was always plenty of cakes and fruit and hoops and balls and croquet and tennis, ninepins and gymnastic appliances. On sunny afternoons gay laughter and shrieks used to ascend high up into the green tops of the pines, but--Käte noticed it with surprise--her boy, who was generally so wild, was the quietest of them all on those occasions. He did not care for those visits. He did not care for those well-behaved boys in white and blue sailor-suits, with their fresh faces showing above their dazzling collars; he never felt really at home with them. He would have preferred to have run away to a place far away from there, where nobody else went except now and then a beggar with a large bag, who would turn over every bit of paper with his wire hook to see whether something of value had not been left there the Sunday before. He would have liked to help that man. Or fill the large bag with pine-cones.
But still Wolfgang had some friends. There was Hans Flebbe--his father was coachman at the banker's, who owned the splendid villa on the other side of the road and lived in Bellevuestrasse in Berlin in the winter--and there were also Artur and Frida. But their father was only porter in a villa that was let out to different families.
As soon as these three came home from school, they would stand outside the Schliebens' villa. They could not be driven away, they would wait there patiently until Wolfgang joined them.
"He's like a brother to my Hans," the coachman used to say, and he would greet him with a specially condescending flick of his whip from his high seat. And the porter and his wife used to state with much satisfaction: "Yes, old Schlieben always touches his hat, and she, his lady, also says 'how do you do?' to us in a very friendly style, but the little one, oh, he's quite different."
Those were wild games the four comrades played together, and in which Frida was reckoned to be quite a boy: catch, hide and seek, but best of all, robbers and policemen. How Wolf's eyes sparkled when he, as the robber captain, gave the policeman, Hans Flebbe, a kick in the stomach, so that he fell backwards on the ground and lay for a time without moving from pain.
"I've shot him," he said to his mother proudly.
Käte, who had been called to the window by the noisy shrieks of the children who were rushing about wildly in the waste field behind the villa, had beckoned to her boy to come in. He had come unwillingly; but he had come. Now he stood breathless before her, and she stroked the damp hair away from the face that was wet with perspiration: "What a sight you look! And here--look."
She pointed reproachfully to his white blouse that was covered with dirt. Where in all the world had he made himself so filthy? there were no real pools there. And his trousers. The right leg was slit open the whole way down, the left one had a three-cornered hole in the knee.
Pooh, that was nothing. He wanted to rush away again, he was trembling with impatience; his playfellows were crouching behind the bush, they dared not come out before he, their captain, came back to them. He strove against the hand that was holding him; but his struggles were of no avail that time, his father came out of the next room.