“Come back, child!” the gentleman called after her.  “There is nobody in the castle, and you won’t find any.”

It seemed strange to Maezli that there should be nobody to bring water to the Castle-Steward.

“I’ll find somebody for him,” she said, eagerly running down the incline to the door, in whose vicinity Mr. Trius was wandering up and down.

“You are to go up to the Castle-Steward at once,” she said standing still in front of him, “and you are to bring him some cold water, because he has a headache.  But very quickly.”

Mr. Trius glanced at Maezli in an infuriated way as if to say:  “How do you dare to come to me like this?” Then throwing the door wide open he growled like a cross bear:  “Out of here first, so I can close it.”  After Maezli had slipped out he banged the big door with all his might so that the hinges rattled.  Turning the monstrous key twice in the lock, he also bolted it with a vengeance.  By this he meant to show that no one could easily go in again at his pleasure.

Apollonie, who had been sitting down in the shade not far from the door now went up to Maezli and said, “You stayed there a long time.  What did the gentleman say?”

“Very little, but I told him a lot,” Maezli said.  “He has a headache, Apollonie, and just think! nobody ever brings him any water, and Mr. Trius even turns the key and bolts the door before he goes to him.”

Apollonie broke out into such lamentations and complaints after these words that Maezli could not bear it.

“But he has the water long ago, Apollonie.  I am sure Mr. Trius gave it to him.  Please don’t go on so,” she said a trifle impatiently.  But this was only oil poured on the flames.

“Yes, no one knows what he does and what he doesn’t do,” Apollonie lamented, louder than ever.  “The poor master is sick, and all his servant does is to stumble about the place, not asking after his needs and letting everything go to rack and ruin.  Not a cabbage-head or a pea-plant is to be seen.  Not one strawberry or raspberry, no golden apricots on the wall or a single little dainty peach.  The disorder everywhere is frightful.  When I think how wonderfully it used to be managed by the Baroness!” Apollonie kept on wiping her eyes because present conditions worried her dreadfully.  “You can’t understand it, Maezli,” she continued, when she had calmed down a trifle.  “You see, child, I should be glad to give a finger of my right hand if I could go up there one day a week in order to arrange things for the master as they should be and fix the garden and the vegetables.  The stuff the old soldier is giving him to eat is perfectly horrid, I know.”

Maezli hated to hear complaints, so she always looked for a remedy.

“You don’t need to be so unhappy,” she said.  “Just cook some nice milk-pudding for him and I’ll take it up to him.  Then he’ll have something good to eat, something much better than vegetables; oh, yes, a thousand times better.”