So the children lived together. She was often too quiet for him, and he was often too head-strong for her, but for all that they stuck to one another. They spent nearly all their leisure hours together: in winter in their mothers’ tiny rooms, during the summer in wood and field.

Once when Elisabeth was scolded by the teacher in Reinhard’s hearing, he angrily banged his slate upon the table in order to turn upon himself the master’s wrath. This failed to attract attention.

But Reinhard paid no further attention to the geography lessons, and instead he composed a long poem, in which he compared himself to a young eagle, the schoolmaster to a grey crow, and Elisabeth to a white dove; the eagle vowed vengeance on the grey crow, as soon as his wings had grown.

Tears stood in the young poet’s eyes: he felt very proud of himself. When he reached home he contrived to get hold of a little parchment-bound volume with a lot of blank pages in it; and on the first pages he elaborately wrote out his first poem.

Soon after this he went to another school. Here he made many new friendships among boys of his own age, but this did not interrupt his comings and goings with Elisabeth. Of the stories which he had formerly told her over and over again he now began to write down the ones which she had liked best, and in doing so the fancy often took him to weave in something of his own thoughts; yet, for some reason he could not understand, he could never manage it.

So he wrote them down exactly as he had heard them himself. Then he handed them over to Elisabeth, who kept them carefully in a drawer of her writing-desk, and now and again of an evening when he was present it afforded him agreeable satisfaction to hear her reading aloud to her mother these little tales out of the notebooks in which he had written them.

Seven years had gone by. Reinhard was to leave the town in order to proceed to his higher education. Elisabeth could not bring herself to think that there would now be a time to be passed entirely without Reinhard. She was delighted when he told her one day that he would continue to write out stories for her as before; he would send them to her in the letters to his mother, and then she would have to write back to him and tell him how she liked them.

The day of departure was approaching, but ere it came a good deal more poetry found its way into the parchment-bound volume. This was the one secret he kept from Elisabeth, although she herself had inspired the whole book and most of the songs, which gradually had filled up almost half of the blank pages.

It was the month of June, and Reinhard was to start on the following day. It was proposed to spend one more festive day together and therefore a picnic was arranged for a rather large party of friends in an adjacent forest.

It was an hour’s drive along the road to the edge of the wood, and there the company took down the provision baskets from the carriages and walked the rest of the way. The road lay first of all through a pine grove, where it was cool and darksome, and the ground was all strewed with pine needles.

After half an hour’s walk they passed out of the gloom of the pine trees into a bright fresh beech wood. Here everything was light and green; every here and there a sunbeam burst through the leafy branches, and high above their heads a squirrel was leaping from branch to branch.

The party came to a halt at a certain spot, over which the topmost branches of ancient beech trees interwove a transparent canopy of leaves. Elisabeth’s mother opened one of the baskets, and an old gentleman constituted himself quartermaster.

“Round me, all of you young people,” he cried, “and attend carefully to what I have to say to you. For lunch each one of you will now get two dry rolls; the butter has been left behind at home. The extras every one must find for himself. There are plenty of strawberries in the wood that is, for anyone who knows where to find them. Unless you are sharp, you’ll have to eat dry bread; that’s the way of the world all over. Do you understand what I say?”

“Yes, yes,” cried the young folks.

“Yes, but look here,” said the old gentleman, “I have not done yet. We old folks have done enough roaming about in our time, and therefore we will stay at home now, here, I mean, under these wide-spreading trees, and we’ll peel the potatoes and make a fire and lay the table, and by twelve o’clock the eggs shall be boiled.

“In return for all this you will be owing us half of your strawberries, so that we may also be able to serve some dessert. So off you go now, east and west, and mind be honest.”

The young folks cast many a roguish glance at one another.

“Wait,” cried the old gentleman once again. “I suppose I need not tell you this, that whoever finds none need not produce any; but take particular note of this, that he will get nothing out of us old folks either. Now you have had enough good advice for to-day; and if you gather strawberries to match you will get on very well for the present at any rate.”

The young people were of the same opinion, and pairing off in couples set out on their quest.

“Come along, Elisabeth,” said Reinhard, “I know where there is a clump of strawberry bushes; you shan’t eat dry bread.”

Elisabeth tied the green ribbons of her straw hat together and hung it on her arm. “Come on, then,” she said, “the basket is ready.”

Off into the wood they went, on and on; on through moist shady glens, where everything was so peaceful, except for the cry of the falcon flying unseen in the heavens far above their heads; on again through the thick brushwood, so thick that Reinhard must needs go on ahead to make a track, here snapping off a branch, there bending aside a trailing vine. But ere long he heard Elisabeth behind him calling out his name. He turned round.

“Reinhard!” she called, “do wait for me! Reinhard!”

He could not see her, but at length he caught sight of her some way off struggling with the undergrowth, her dainty head just peeping out over the tops of the ferns. So back he went once more and brought her out from the tangled mass of briar and brake into an open space where blue butterflies fluttered among the solitary wood blossoms.

Reinhard brushed the damp hair away from her heated face, and would have tied the straw hat upon her head, but she refused; yet at his earnest request she consented after all.

“But where are your strawberries?” she asked at length, standing still and drawing a deep breath.

“They were here,” he said, “but the toads have got here before us, or the martens, or perhaps the fairies.”

“Yes,” said Elisabeth, “the leaves are still here; but not a word about fairies in this place. Come along, I’m not a bit tired yet; let us look farther on.”

In front of them ran a little brook, and on the far side the wood began again. Reinhard raised Elisabeth in his arms and carried her over. After a while they emerged from the shady foliage and stood in a wide clearing.

“There must be strawberries here,” said the girl, “it all smells so sweet.”

They searched about the sunny spot, but they found none. “No,” said Reinhard, “it is only the smell of the heather.”

Everywhere was a confusion of raspberry-bushes and holly, and the air was filled with a strong smell of heather, patches of which alternated with the short grass over these open spaces.

“How lonely it is here!” said Elisabeth “I wonder where the others are?”

Reinhard had never thought of getting back.

“Wait a bit,” he said, holding his hand aloft; “where is the wind coming from?” But wind there was none.

“Listen!” said Elisabeth, “I think I heard them talking. Just give a call in that direction.”

Reinhard hollowed his hand and shouted: “Come here!”

“Here!” was echoed back.

“They answered,” cried Elisabeth clapping her hands.

“No, that was nothing; it was only the echo.”

Elisabeth seized Reinhard’s hand. “I’m frightened!” she said.

“Oh! no, you must not be frightened. It is lovely here. Sit down there in the shade among the long grass. Let us rest awhile: we’ll find the others soon enough.”

Elisabeth sat down under the overhanging branch of a beech and listened intently in every direction. Reinhard sat a few paces off on a tree stump, and gazed over at her in silence.

The sun was just above their heads, shining with the full glare of midday heat. Tiny, gold-flecked, steel-blue flies poised in the air with vibrating wings. Their ears caught a gentle humming and buzzing all round them, and far away in the wood were heard now and again the tap-tap of the woodpecker and the screech of other birds.

“Listen,” said Elisabeth, “I hear a bell.”

“Where?” asked Reinhard.

“Behind us. Do you hear it? It is striking twelve o’clock.”

“Then the town lies behind us, and if we go straight through in this direction we are bound to fall in with the others.”

So they started on their homeward way; they had given up looking for strawberries, for Elisabeth had become tired. And at last there rang out from among the trees the laughing voices of the picnic party; then they saw too a white cloth spread gleaming on the ground; it was the luncheon-table and on it were strawberries enough and to spare.

The old gentleman had a table-napkin tucked in his button-hole and was continuing his moral sermon to the young folks and vigorously carving a joint of roast meat.

“Here come the stragglers,” cried the young people when they saw Reinhard and Elisabeth advancing among the trees.

“This way,” shouted the old gentleman. “Empty your handkerchiefs, upside down, with your hats! Now show us what you have found.”

“Only hunger and thirst,” said Reinhard.

“If that’s all,” replied the old man, lifting up and showing them the bowl full of fruit, “you must keep what you’ve got. You remember the agreement: nothing here for lazybones to eat.”

But in the end he was prevailed on to relent; the banquet proceeded, and a thrush in a juniper bush provided the music.

So the day passed. But Reinhard had, after all, found something, and though it was not strawberries yet it was something that had grown in the wood. When he got home this is what he wrote in his old parchment-bound volume:

Out on the hill-side yonder
The wind to rest is laid;
Under the drooping branches
There sits the little maid.

She sits among the wild thyme,
She sits in the fragrant air;
The blue flies hum around her,
Bright wings flash everywhere.

And through the silent woodland
She peers with watchful eyen,
While on her hazel ringlets
Sparkles the glad sunshine.

And far, far off the cuckoo
Laughs out his song.
I ween Hers are the bright, the golden
Eyes of the woodland queen.

So she was not only his little sweetheart, but was also the expression of all that was lovely and wonderful in his opening life.