There was a gleam in the dark eyes of the boy, who loved freedom, the free air and to run about free. He did not say his father had made him happy, but he drew a deep breath as if a load had fallen off his chest. And the man noticed something in his face, that was now commencing to grow coarser, to lose the soft contours of childhood and get the sharp ones of youth, that made it refined and beautiful.
Wolfgang flew back across the field as quick as lightning, as if shot from a tightly strung bow.
The man went back into his garden. He opened the gate cautiously so that it should not creak, and closed it again just as quietly--Käte need not know where he had been. But she was already standing at the window.
There was something touchingly helpless in her attitude, such an anxious scrutiny in her eyes--no, she need not look at him like that, he was not angry with her.
And he nodded to her.
When the housemaid asked whether the master did not know where the young gentleman was--she had had the milk warmed three times already for him and had run up and downstairs with it--he said in a low voice with an excuse in the tone: "Oh, that does not matter, Lisbeth. Warm it for a fourth time later on. It is so healthy for him to be out of doors."
BOOK II
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CHAPTER VIII
It was Frida Lämke's birthday. "If you may come we are to have buns with raisins in, but if you mayn't there'll only be rolls like we have every day," she said to her friend Wolfgang. "Mind you get them to let you come." It was of most importance to her that Wolfgang came; no differences were made on account of Flebbe, although he always said he was going to marry her.