Renti, with three or four bounds, landed in the middle of his herd, and cracking his whip and yodeling at the top of his voice, he ran on toward the Lindenhof stables.
Gretchen gathered up the two little garlands she had made and spread them out on the palm of her hand; then she, too, moved on toward home, accompanied almost to her door by Renti's loud yodeling.
CHAPTER II
THE TWO FARMS
The house at Lindenhof had a big, comfortable living room, with a green Dutch-tiled stove in the middle and wooden benches all along the walls. Around the stove there was also a bench, where an old gray cat usually lay purring lazily. Wide steps, that were like many little benches set over one another, led upstairs to the sleeping rooms. In this way there was abundant opportunity for sitting down in any part of the room, and this gave the place an air of ease and comfort.
The farmer and his wife had two daughters, one twenty, the other nineteen years old; but they were no longer at home, both having married in the previous summer, one soon after the other. They had both married well, for the young farmers whom they had taken to husband had farms of their own and were comfortably established. Now the father and mother were by themselves again, as in the beginning. At first they kept only one hired man, for the husband said, "We'd better hire day laborers in the busy season, and then be alone the rest of the time, than to keep several men in the house."