“She is only our maid.”  That little word “only” smote painfully on the girl’s heart.  But she recovered herself quickly and smiled; for a voice within her said: 

“Don’t let your pleasure be spoiled by a single word.  If you begin anything new, you are sure to step on thorns at first.”

Rose took Barefoot aside and said:  “You may go for the present to the dancing-room, or wherever you like, if you have any acquaintances in the place.  When the music begins I shall want to see you again.”

And so Barefoot stood forsaken, as it were, and feeling as if she had stolen the clothes she had on, and did not belong to the company at all, as if she were an intruder.

“How comes it that thou goest to such a wedding?” she asked herself; and she would have liked to go home again.  She decided to take a walk through the village.  She passed by the beautiful house built for Brosi, where there was plenty of life today, too; for the wife of that high official was spending the summer here with her sons and daughters.  Barefoot turned back toward the village again, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and yet wishing that somebody would accost her that she might have a companion.  On the outskirts of the village she encountered a smart-looking young man riding a white horse.  He was attired in farmer’s dress, but of a strange kind, and looked very proud.  He pulled up his horse, rested his right hand with the whip in it on his hip, and patting the animal’s neck with his left, called out: 

“Good morning, pretty mistress!  Tired of dancing already?”

“I’m tired of idle questions already,” was the reply.

The horseman rode on.  Barefoot sat for a long time behind a hedge, while many thoughts flitted through her mind.  Her cheeks glowed with a flush caused by anger at herself for having made so sharp a reply to a harmless question, by bashfulness, and by a strange, inward emotion.  And involuntarily she began to hum the old song: 

  “There were two lovers in Allgau
  Who loved each other so dear.”

She had begun the day in expectation of joy, and now she wished that she were dead.  She thought to herself:  “How good it would be to fall asleep here behind this hedge and never to awake again.  You are not to have any joy in this life, why should you run about so long?  The grasshoppers are chirping in the grass, a warm fragrance is rising from the earth, a linnet is singing incessantly and seems to dive into himself with his voice and to bring up finer and finer notes, and yet seems to be unable to say with his whole heart what he has to say.  Up in the air the larks, too, are singing, every one for himself—­no one listens to the others or joins in with the others—­and yet everything is—­”