"They have not the least idea of it. They may rail at me as much as they please. I shall remain Windekind's friend, and Windekind is worth more to me than all of them put together; yes, master and all."
That was not respectful of Johannes. But after all the hard things he had heard about them the evening before, his esteem for his fellow-creatures had not been increased.
More than that, he was not sensible enough to put his wisdom to the best use; or, rather, to keep silent.
When his master stated that human beings only were gifted by God with reasoning powers, and were placed as rulers over all the other animals, he began to laugh. That cost him a bad mark, and a severe rebuke. And when his seat-mate read aloud from his exercise-book the following sentence: "The sun is very old—she is older than my cross old aunt," Johannes instantly cried out, "He is older!"
Everybody laughed at him, and the master, astonished at such amazing stupidity, as he called it, made Johannes remain after school to write out this sentence a hundred times: "The age of my aunt is very great, the age of the sun is greater; but the greatest thing of all is my amazing stupidity."
His schoolmates had all disappeared, and Johannes sat alone writing in the great school-room. The sun shone gaily in, lighting up a thousand motes on the way, and forming on the white-washed walls great splashes of light which, with the passing hours, crept slowly forward. The teacher had gone away, and shut the door behind him with a bang. Johannes was already on the fifty-second "age of my aunt," when a nimble little mouse, with silky ears, and little black beads of eyes, came out of the farthest corner of the room and ran without a sound along by the wall. Johannes kept as still as death, not to frighten away the pretty creature. It was not afraid, and came up close to where he was sitting. Then, peering round a moment with its bright keen little eyes, it sprang lightly up—one jump to the bench, the second to the desk on which Johannes was writing.
"Hey!" said he, half to himself, "but you are a plucky little mouse!"
"I do not know whom I should be afraid of," said a mite of a voice; and the mouse showed his little teeth as if he were laughing.
Johannes had already become used to many wonderful things, but this made him open his eyes wide. In the middle of the day, and in school! It was past all belief.
"You need not be afraid of me," said he, softly—for fear of startling the mouse. "Have you come from Windekind?"