He looked at it, and laughed.

‘Heidelbeer!’ he said.

‘No! From the bilberries under the snow. Doesn’t it look as if it were distilled from snow. Can you — ’ she sniffed, and sniffed at the bottle — ’can you smell bilberries? Isn’t it wonderful? It is exactly as if one could smell them through the snow.’

She stamped her foot lightly on the ground. He kneeled down and whistled, and put his ear to the snow. As he did so his black eyes twinkled up.

‘Ha! Ha!’ she laughed, warmed by the whimsical way in which he mocked at her verbal extravagances. He was always teasing her, mocking her ways. But as he in his mockery was even more absurd than she in her