And I hummed fairly enough:
"'My true love hath my heart and I have his.'"
***
"And if it goes like that," said she, quickly, "it goeth like a tomcat
mollrowing on the tiles in the middle of the night."
Now this being manifestly only spiteful, I took no notice of her work. "Helene does not love good music," said I; "'tis her only fault. But I trust that you, dear Katrin, have a greater taste for angelic song?"
"And I trust you love to scratch upon the twangling zither as cats sharpen their claws upon the bark of trees? You love such music, dear Katrin, do you not?" cried Helene over her shoulder from the window.
But Katrin, the divine cow, knew not what to make of us. I think she was of the opinion that Helene and I, with much study upon books, had suddenly gone mad.
"I do indeed love music," she said at last, uncertainly, "but, Master Hugo, not the kind of which my gossip, Helene, speaks. I love best of all a ballad of love, sung sweetly and with a melting expression, as from a lover by the wall to his mistress aloft in the balcony, like that of him of Italy, who sings:
"'O words that fall like summer dew on me.'
"How goes it?
"'O breath more sweet than is the growing—the growing—'"
She paused, and waved her hand as if to summon the words from the empty air.