The old man declared it was high time he departed, but he could not understand how the time had flown.
"Will you come again soon?" he asked. "Tell your Cousin Lorenz I am expecting you. I must say one thing more: Teach our boys to play on the pipe as you do, so we will have music worth hearing when you are gone."
Vinzi declared he was showing them every day how it was done but they did not bring out the notes clearly and smoothly so as to make a melody. They learned to sing a song much sooner than they learn to play it on the pipe.
"Well, teach them to sing pretty songs, then; you must know any number of them. You know songs which are not hymns?"
"I have heard Cousin Lorenz sing a few, and I knew one before that, though I never had the words belonging to it," replied Vinzi.
"You are worse than I am; you are just a boy but already forget the words. You are too young to do that," was the grandfather's opinion.
"No, I have not forgotten them," said Vinzi quite seriously. "I never knew them."
The old man looked searchingly at the boy to see if he were joking, but Vinzi was much too earnest for that, so he asked: "How can you know a song if you do not know the words?"
"I know how they ought to sound, and a few of the words, but I cannot put them together so they will make a song. This morning when I sat among the roses, I heard the song and could sing it, but not the words. Oh, if only someone could make a song of it!" And Vinzi looked up at the old man with a strange craving on his face.
"Perhaps I know someone," replied the latter, for something had occurred to him that might help Vinzi.