If Mux looked a little timidly at the large cabbage heads, Esther said to him: “Don’t be afraid of them, Mux. If I cook cabbage, everybody else likes it so much that you won’t have to eat it at all, and you can take the potatoes which I serve with it.”
Mux often accompanied Esther to the kitchen, where he soon picked up a lot of useful knowledge. There was no pastry the exact recipe of which as well as how it tasted Mux could not tell. In this manner he lived through heavenly days.
They were no less heavenly for the other children. Dino and Cornelli had started the large undertaking of laying out Martha’s garden after their own plan. They were so busy inventing things and carrying them out that they could hardly ever be found.
Agnes struggled with Dino for first place in Cornelli’s affection, but Dino was always the victor. Cornelli never forgot that he had been her first friend, who had held fast to their friendship. For this she remained faithful to him.
It was a consolation to Agnes that she could play on the lovely piano whenever she wanted to and that Cornelli was always home in the evenings, when she could sing with her. Mr. Hellmut would sit in his armchair while the two girls sang one song after another, and he could never hear enough. Beaming with joy, he would say to Mrs. Halm from time to time: “The child has her mother’s voice, except that her mother’s voice was still fuller and softer.”
Mrs. Halm’s face would beam, too, as she would say: “Just have a little patience, Director. You are sure some day to hear Cornelli’s voice when there will be nothing more to desire in it. Her teacher’s highest wish is to train her voice.” For answer the father nodded and lay back in his chair smiling contentedly.
Nika, too, was completely changed. No shadows dimmed her eyes, for she could wander about all day with her paint box from one lovely spot to another, up to the beech wood or to the hill where the big oak tree stood. There she could sit on a bench and look down, over the house and garden, and far below into the wide, green valley. Nika was very happy to be able to spend all her time in painting, without ever being disturbed or called away by unwished-for duties.
When the mother saw the happy faces of her girls and Dino’s improved health, she felt very happy, too. Suddenly, however, the thought would rise in her: How will it be when these lovely days are over and we have to start living again in the narrow confines of town and in the shadow of those coming years?
The holidays were nearing their end, but nobody yet had time to think of that, for the Director’s birthday was drawing near and this was to be the great feast day for everybody. Mrs. Halm had asked each of the children to think out some surprise for Mr. Hellmut. For Mux, however, she wrote a beautiful birthday verse. As the little boy’s head was filled solely with thoughts of the barn and stable, the kitchen and the goat cart, the plums, the beetles and ants, it took a great deal of time and trouble to fix the verse in his memory. Nika, needing no advice, had long ago decided what to do. Every day as soon as the meals were over, she silently disappeared. Agnes and Cornelli bolted the door of the music room and let mysterious songs issue from behind it. Only Dino was still undecided about his task. When he was left alone with his mother and Mux one day, and all the others were busy with their preparations, he said: “Tell me what I could do, mother.”
“Draw him a picture of the beautiful goat,” Mux advised. He knew that Dino could draw animals well, and to him there was no finer animal in all the world than the goat.
“What a knowing goat boy you are, Mux,” Dino exclaimed. Despite his refusal to draw the goat, he had nevertheless gotten an idea from his little brother. “Oh, I’ll draw the two brown horses,” he called out joyously. “I’ll make one trotting and the other walking. Matthew must lead them up for me.”
So the boy ran happily to the stable, and after that day he and Matthew had many meetings in secret.
The birthday came at last.
When the Director entered the dining room in the morning, such a beautiful duet resounded from the next room that he was compelled to draw nearer. Agnes and Cornelli were both singing a lovely song with such deep feeling that the Director could hardly speak. When they had ended, he patted them both on the shoulder with fatherly tenderness and then passed into the next room. Here Mux approached him and said his verse faultlessly in a loud, clear voice. On the table the Director found two beautiful drawings of his brown horses, and his joy over them was so great that he did not put them down for quite a while. But finally he saw all at once a large picture resting in the middle of the table. His house, with the surrounding garden, the luminous meadow with the view toward the valley and the distant mountains beyond, was painted in such fresh and absolutely natural colors that Mr. Hellmut was quite overcome. This was the view he had loved so passionately from his childhood.
“Cornelli, come here!” the father called. “Just look at this picture! Don’t you have a beautiful home? Do you love your home as much as your father loves it?”
“Oh yes, Papa, I love it so much!” said Cornelli. “And I have to think every day that I never knew how beautiful it was before I went away. But ever since I came home again, I know. Oh, how beautiful it looks in
