She wondered if she had not ventured too far
after all.
In the fields, where the first ears of wheat were beginning to sprout
and still lay half concealed in their green sheaths, the two stopped and
stood looking at each other in silence. For a long time neither said a
word. But finally it was the man who broke the silence, by saying, half
to himself:
"I wonder how it is that one, on first sight, can be so--so--I don't
know--so confidential with a person? How is it one can read what is
written in another's face?" "Now we have set a poor soul free," said
Amrei; "for you know, when two people think the same thought at the same
time, they are said to set a soul free. And I was thinking the very
words you just spoke."
"Indeed? And do you know why?"
"Yes."
"Will you tell me?"
"Why not? Look you; I have been a goose-keeper--"
At these words the stranger started again; but he pretended that
something had fallen into his eye, and began to rub that organ
vigorously, while Barefoot went on, undismayed:
"Look you; when one sits or lies alone out in the fields all day, one
thinks of hundreds of things, and some of them are strange thoughts
indeed. Just try it yourself, and you will certainly find it so. Every
fruit-tree, if you look at it as a whole, has the appearance of the
fruit it bears. Take the apple-tree; does it not look, spread out broad,
and, as it were, in round pieces, like the apple itself? And the same is
true of the pear-tree and the cherry-tree, if only you look at them in
the right way.
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