The same feeling remained, too, after he had been at home for some time and came to see her constantly day after day. When they sat alone together there ensued pauses in the conversation which distressed him, and which he anxiously did his best to avoid. In order to have a definite occupation during the holidays, he began to give Elisabeth some instruction in botany, in which he himself had been keenly interested during the early months of his university career.
Elisabeth, who was wont to follow him in all things and was moreover very quick to learn, willingly entered into the proposal. So now several times in the week they made excursions into the fields or the moors, and if by midday they brought home their green field-box full of plants and flowers, Reinhard would come again later in the day and share with Elisabeth what they had collected in common.
With this same object in view, he entered the room one afternoon while Elisabeth was standing by the window and sticking some fresh chick-weed in a gilded birdcage which he had not seen in the place before. In the cage was a canary, which was flapping its wings and shrilly chirruping as it pecked at Elisabeth's fingers. Previously to this Reinhard's bird had hung in that spot.
"Has my poor linnet changed into a goldfinch after its death?" he asked jovially.
"Linnets are not accustomed to do any such thing," said Elizabeth's mother, who sat spinning in her arm-chair. "Your friend Eric sent it this noon from his estate as a present for Elisabeth."
"What estate?"
"Why, don't you know?"
"Know what?"
"That a month ago Eric took over his father's second estate by the
Immensee."[3]
[3] i.e. the 'Lake of the Bees'