"Wont you take a ride with me, Baumann?"
The old man casts a glance of inquiry at the sky, where dark, heavy clouds are hanging low, looks down again, and says:
"It looks threatening, sir. I think we shall have rain, and perhaps snow, in half an hour; that is more than vraisemblable."
"Why, Baumann, you always have something to say," says the handsome boy, grumbling; "the pony is getting stiff from standing so long, and I should like so much to take a ride."
"Well, well," says the old man; "we were only yesterday all the way to Cona."
"That is a great thing! Three miles! And the doctor says I ought to ride every day."
"Oh, if the doctor says so, I presume we must do it," replied Baumann, who has only been waiting for a good pretext to give way without dishonor. "I will just open the windows in the parlor here, and then I'll come down. In the meantime go ask the baroness, and say good-by to her."
"Yes; but make haste."
"Well, well," says the old man, and his gray head disappears from the window.
The boy hurries back into the house, but his mother is not to be found in the "garden-room," where she commonly sits; nor in the "red-room" adjoining, to which she retires when she wishes to be alone. The boy hurries from the garden-room--leaving the door, of course, wide open--into the garden, and down the long walk between the clipped yews of the terrace. As he does not find his mother here, and yet is in such a very great hurry, he considers whether he has not done all that could be done. He hesitates for a moment, and is just about to turn back, when it occurs to him that Baumann is sure to ask him, sometime during their ride: Young gentleman, did you say good-by to the baroness? and that he would be ashamed to have to say, No! He jumps with one leap down the steps which lead to the terrace and runs deeper into the garden, calling out from time to time: "Mamma! Mamma!"