“There goes the girl-hunter!” called out a giggling urchin as Blindschleicher was passing a group of lads with a mien half haughty and half self-conscious.
As he reached the church the bells were just ringing for High Mass, and the people were crowding through the door, and he joined them like a good Christian as he was. Turning once to see who it was that was in such a mighty hurry behind him, whom should he discover quite near his side but Liese. She was giggling with some lads, who pressed close about her. Blindschleicher saw the vessel for holy water wherein each dipped his fingers in passing. At that moment the gardener’s apprentice was seized with a sudden impulse. Dipping his hollow hand in the water, and crying, “Here is one whose devil I would expel!” he threw the entire handful into fair Liese’s face.
Liese caught her breath, said loud and distinctly, “He is out already!” and gave the fellow a resounding box on his ear.
And that is how Blindschleicher went courting, and what it brought him.
P. K. Rosegger.
“WHOM FIRST WE LOVE.”
May 1.—I love him! Only thou, my journal, shalt know it, thou silent confidant of all my sorrows and my hopes. Without it is spring-time, and the nightingales warble and the lilacs are in bloom. What a lovely time for one’s first love!
May 2.—All night I lay awake and thought of him, and made poetry. It seems like the bitterest irony of fate that I must go to school to-day, as if I were a child!
May 3.—He is perfectly heavenly, handsome, raven-locked, with dark, glowing eyes, and a pale Roman face; his moustache is simply enchanting. There is certainly something demoniacal about him. I adore demoniacal men. They are so exciting and interesting. He looks marvellously like Lord Byron. Perhaps he is a poet, or a Polish prince in exile. He looks so melancholy and aristocratic. I imagine Max Piccolomini looked like that as Mortimer in Mary Stuart.
May 4.—How he looked at me as he passed me on the way to school to-day! I put that provoking school-bag behind my back. I trust he did not see it.