"Well, I am here now," he laughs.
And she: "I set great hopes on you!"--
"Then collar me!"
"You are too floury for me."
"A fine miller's wife to be afraid of flour," he teases.
"Never mind," she interrupts, "I shall soon put your playing powers to the test."
In the gloaming, when they are once more sitting together on the veranda, and Johannes, like his brother, sits dreaming with his head hidden in the foliage, he suddenly feels a round, indefinable something hit his head and then drop to the ground. "Perhaps it was a cock-chafer," he thinks to himself, but the attack is renewed two or three times.
Then he begins to suspect Trude, who sits like a perfect picture of innocence, humming quite dolefully to herself, "In Yonder Verdant Valley," while she works little bread pellets which evidently serve as her missiles.
He suppresses a merry laugh, secretly gets hold of a branch of the vine on which a few of last year's dried-up berries are still hanging, and when she lets fly a new volley at him, he promptly dispatches his reply at her little nose.
She flinches, looks at him quite amazed for a moment, and when he bends towards her with the most serious face in the world, she bursts into a loud, joyful laugh.