“You have invented that this very minute,” cried Orpheus laughing.  “We know you.  If you can only turn the laugh against yourself. . .”

“No, really,” cried Dada, “the idea flew through my head like a bird through a room; but I remembered at once that a hole burnt through shows on both sides, so I threw the dress aside as past mending and sat down on the low stool to peep through the wicket by the door out at the yard; the singing had stopped and the silence frightened me almost as much.  Papias had stopped his piping too, and was sitting in the corner where Orpheus sat to write his letter to Tauromenium.”

“I know,” said Orpheus, “the inkstand was there, that the steward of the inn had lent us the day before.”

“Just so; and when mother came in, there he was, dipping his finger in the ink, and painting his white dress—­you can study the pattern at your leisure.—­But no not interrupt me.—­Well, I was looking into the court-yard; it was quite empty; all the monks were gone.  Suddenly a tall young man in a white dress with a beautiful sky-blue border appeared through the great gate.  The gate-keeper crawled after him very humbly as far as his rope would allow and even the steward spoke to him with both hands pressed to his breast as if he had a faithful heart on the right side as well as the one on the left.  This young man—­it was our kind friend Marcus, of course—­crossed the court, taking a zigzag at first, as a snipe flies, and then came towards our door.  The steward and the gate-keeper had both vanished.—­Do you remember the young Goths whom their father took to bathe in the Tiber last winter, when it was so cold?  And how they first stood on the brink and dipped their toes in, and then ran away and when they came back again just wetted their heads and chests?  But they had to jump in at last when their father shouted some barbaric words to them—­I can see them now.  Well, Marcus was exactly like those boys; but at last he suddenly walked straight up to our door and knocked.”

“He remembered your pretty face no doubt,” laughed Karnis.

“May be.  However, I did not stir.  I kept as still as a mouse, sitting on my stool and watching him through the key-hole, till presently he called out:  ‘Is no one there?’ Then I forgot and answered:  ‘They are all out!’ Of course I had betrayed myself—­but it is impossible to think of everything at once.  Oh! yes—­you may laugh.  And he smiled too—­he is a very handsome fellow—­and desired me most pressingly to open the door as he had something of the greatest importance to say to me.  I said he could talk very well through the gap at the top; that Pyramus and Thisbe had even kissed through a chink in a wall.  But he would not see the joke; he got graver and more earnest, and insisted, saying that our fate, his and mine, hung on that hour, and that not a soul must overhear what he had to say.  The top of the door was too high to whisper through, so there was nothing for it but to ask Papias for