"Little sheep ... little sheep,..." he kept on saying. And Ingeborg, having reached that point in convalescence where one never misses a chance of crying, at once cried, too; and Robertlet beginning to cry, the nurse, who laughed, broke up the group.
After that things grew better every day. Ingeborg visibly improved; every hour almost it was possible to see some new step made back to her original self. She clung to the nurse, who stayed on long after the carrying into the next room stage had been passed and who did not leave her till she was walking about quite gaily in the garden and beginning to do the things with Robertlet that she had planned she would. She seemed, after the long months of ugliness, to be prettier than before. She was so glad, so grateful, to be back again, and her gladness lit her up. It was so wonderful to be back in the bright world of free movement, to be presently going to punt, and presently be off for a day in the forests, to be able to arrange, to be in clear possession of her time and her body. The deliciousness of health, the happiness of being just normal made her radiant.
The September that year was one of ripe days and glowing calms. Neither Herr Dremmel nor Ingeborg had ever been quite so happy. He loved her as warmly as before their marriage. He found himself noticing things like the fine texture of her skin, and observing how pretty the back of her neck was and the way her hair behaved just at that point. She was the brightest adornment and finish to a man's house, he said to himself, independently busy with her baby and her housekeeping, not worrying him, not having to be thought about in his laboratory when he wished to work, absorbed in womanly interests, cheerful, affectionate, careful of her child. It was delightful to have her sit on his knee again, delightful to hear her talk the sweet and sometimes even amusing nonsense with which her head seemed full, delightful to see her sudden solemnity when there was anything to be done for the personal comfort of Robertlet.
"Aren't we happy," said Ingeborg one evening when they were strolling after supper along the path through the rye-field, all the old fearlessness and confidence in life surging in her again. "Did you ever know anything like it?"
"It is you, my little sun among sheep," said Herr Dremmel, standing still to kiss her as energetically as though he had been beneath the pear-tree in the Bishop's garden, "it is all you."
"And presently," she said, "I'm going to do such things—Robert, such things. First, I'm going to be a proper pastor's wife at last and turn to in the village thoroughly. And besides that I'm going to—"
She stopped and flung out her hands with a familiar gesture.
"Well, little hare?"
"Oh, I don't know—but it's fun being alive, isn't it? I feel as if I'd only got to stretch up my hands to all those stars and catch as many of them as I want to."
And hardly had the nurse left and the household had returned to its normal arrangements, and the parlour was no longer disfigured by Herr Dremmel's temporary bed, and life was clear again, and all one had to do was to go ahead praising the dear God who had made it so spacious and so kind, than she began to have her second child.