Ernestine shrunk back. "I cannot go there any more!"
"Why not? What have they done to you?"
"They laughed at me, and jeered me," cried the irritated child; "they despised me; and I will not be despised! I will not!"
The young man looked at her thoughtfully.
"Even if I am ugly," she continued, "and poor, and badly taught, and awkward, I will not be treated like a dog!" There was a tone of despair in her voice, her chest panted within her narrow dress, her teeth chattered with cold and excitement.
"Poor child!" said Johannes; "they must have used you ill,--but my mother was surely kind to you?"
"Yes, she was kind, but she was vexed with me at last; I heard her blaming me to the others. And I do not want to see her again,--not until I am grown up and can be as dignified and gentle as she is."
"Are you so certain, then, that you will one day be as gentle and dignified?" asked Johannes smiling.
"Yes, the schoolmaster says, and the old gentleman said too, that if I were a boy something might be made of me. Oh, something shall be made of me,--if I am only a girl. I will not always have boys held up to me; when I am grown up, they shall see that a girl is as good as a boy; all these bad, unkind people shall respect me; if they do not, I would rather die!"
"You queer child!" laughed Johannes, "it would be hard to tame you. But see, if you stay any longer here with me in the night air, you will take cold, and then you may die before you have carried out all your resolutions; think how bad that will be!"