Marjon blushed; and, laughing in her confusion, she replied: "What silly things you do say, Jo. It's well that the dark woman doesn't hear you. She might take you in hand."
After a moment of silence, she resumed: "I believe you talk trash, Jo. When I make songs the music does come of itself; but I have to finish it off, though. I must make—compose, you know. It's exactly," she continued, after a pause, "as if a troop of children came in, all unexpected—wild and in disorder, and as if, like a school-teacher, I made them pass in a procession—two by two—and stroked their clothing smooth, and put flowers in their hands, and then set them marching. That's the way I make songs, and so must you make verses. Try now!"
"Exactly," said Johannes;'"but yet the children must first come of themselves."
"But are they not all there, Jo?"
Gazing up into the great dome of the evening sky, where the pale stars were just beginning to sparkle, Johannes thought it over. He thought of the fine day he had had, and also of what he had felt coming into his head.
"Really," said Marjon, rather drily, "you'll just have to, whether you want to or not—to keep from starving."
Then, as if desperately alarmed, Johannes went in search of pencil and paper; and truly, in came the disorderly children, and he arranged them in file, prinked them up, and dealt them out flowers.
He first wrote this:
"Tell me what means the bright sunshine,
The great and restless river Rhine,
This teeming land of flocks and herds—
The high, wide blue of summer sky,
Where fleecy clouds in quiet lie.
To catch the lilt of happy birds.
"The Father thinks, and spreads his dream
As sun and heaven, field and stream.
I feast on his creation—
And when that thought is understood,
Then shall my soul confess Him good,
And kneel in adoration."