For a while they walk beside each other in silence.
She looks down and smiles as if she too had suddenly learned shyness. Conversation flags till they have got through the large entrance-gate. Johannes looks about and gives a cry of amazement. He cannot believe his eyes.
Everything all around is changed, everything is beautified. The round court-yard, which in rainy weather used to be one immense pool of dirt and in dry weather one mass of dust-clouds, now is all covered with turf like some flowering meadow, the doors of the store-houses and stables are resplendent with bright red paint and bear white numbers. In the middle of the open space is an artistic pigeon-house, like a little Swiss chalet, and in front of the house is a newly built veranda, round whose shining windowpanes and dainty wood-carving some young creepers twine their budding tendrils. The mill lies before his ecstatic gaze like the very home of peace and innocence. He folds his hands in emotion and asks "Who has done all this?"
She looks about without speaking.
"You?" he asks, amazed.
"I helped," she answers modestly.
"But you originated it?"
She smiles. This smile makes her appear older, and for a moment her child-like face is suffused with a shimmer of womanly grace.
"Your hand is blessed," he says softly and shyly, more in earnest than is his wont.
He cannot help thinking of his dead mother, who so often complained of the dreadful dust, and that in the whole space outside there was not a single place where she could sit down in comfort.