"Oh, yes," said Lena, who was growing a trifle nervous over this description. "But I am afraid that we shall have rain. Just hear the frogs, Frau Dörr."
"Yes, the frogs," repeated the latter. "At night they keep up such a croaking that one cannot sleep. And why? Because this is all swamp and only looks like meadow land. Look at the pool where the stork is standing and looking right over this way. Well, he isn't looking at me. He might have to look a long time. And a mighty good thing too."
"But we ought really to be turning back," said Lena, who was much embarrassed, and simply wanted to say something.
"Oh, no indeed," laughed Frau Dörr. "Surely not now, Lena; you mustn't get frightened at a little thing like that. Good stork, you must bring me ... Or shall I sing: Dearest stork?"
And so it went on for a while yet, for it took time to get Frau Dörr away from such a favorite topic.
But finally there was a pause, during which they walked slowly onward, until at last they came to a plateau-like ridge that led over from the Spree towards the Havel. Just at this point the pasture land ended and fields of rye and rape seed began and continued as far as the first rows of houses of Wilmersdorf.
"Now let us go up there," said Frau Dörr, "and then we will sit down and pick buttercups and make a wreath out of the stems. It is always so much fun to poke one stem into another until the wreath or the chain is done."
"Yes, yes," said Lena, whose fate it was not to be free from small embarrassments. "Yes, yes. But now come, Frau Dörr, the path leads this way."
And talking thus they climbed the little slope and seated themselves at the top on a heap of weeds and rubbish that had been lying there since the previous autumn. This heap was an excellent resting place, and also afforded a good point of view from which one could overlook a ditch bordered with willows and grass, and could not only see the northern row of houses of Wilmersdorf, but could also plainly hear, from a neighboring smoking-room and bowling-alley, the fall of the ninepins and more plainly still the rolling back of the heavy ball along the two noisy wooden rods of its track. Lena enjoyed this, and took Botho's hand and said: "See, Botho, I understand that so well (for when I was a child we lived near such a bowling-alley) that when I just hear the ball hit, I know at once how much it will make."
"Well," said Botho, "then we can bet."