Heim plucked two pansies that were growing among the weeds, and handed them to Ernestine. "Don't trouble your little brain with such thoughts," he said with an attempt to laugh. "When you are grown up you can learn all you wish to know. How few flowers you have here! Not enough for a nosegay!"
"No matter for that, Herr Heim," said Ernestine gaily. "Although there are so few flowers here, it seems to me as lovely as Paradise."
"The child is imaginative," Heim observed to Leuthold. "She finds Paradise in a neglected kitchen-garden; there is poetry there." And he pointed to her head and heart.
Leuthold took the child's hand. "If you wish for flowers, my darling, you shall have them. You are now"--and a spasmodic smile hovered upon his lips--"so rich that you need deny yourself nothing."
"I am rich!" Ernestine repeated, as though she could not grasp the idea. "Does the chair in which I am sitting belong to me?"
"Most certainly."
"And this garden, and the fields?"
"Everything that you see."
"Oh, how delightful! But, uncle, have I money enough to buy me a telescope like yours?"
Leuthold looked surprised at this question "Is that the end and aim of your desires? Well, then, you shall have a far better one than mine. You shall have an observatory, whence you can search the heavens far and wide, and, if you choose, I will be your teacher. Would you like that?"