For she was gay enough and lightsome enough in her demeanor.

She came in with a skip which would have been entrancing in some elfish mignonne who could dance light-foot on spring flowers without crushing them.

But when this our solid Burgomagisterial Katrin tripped in, it nearly drove me wild with mirth.

For it was as if some bland maternal cow out of the pasture had skipped with a hop and a circle of flying skirts into a ballroom or a butterfly of two hundred pounds' weight had taken to flitting from flower to flower.
And this Katrin talked in a quick, light voice, with ups and downs and skips and quivers in it, as spring-heeled as a chamois goat on the mountains of the south.
"Ah, Tiny-chen," she would cry, as she came undulating and cooing in to our Helene, "is it you, dearest?
'Tis as sweet to see you as for birds to kiss on bough! I have danced all day in the sunshine just to think that I should come to see you! And tell me why you have not been to visit me.
Ah, bad one--cruelest--as cruel as she is pretty" (appealing to me), "is she not?
And there, our Michael, great oaf, sits at home desolated that he does not hear her foot on the stairs.

The foolish fellow tells me that he listens for four little pit-a-pats every time that I come up from the court-yard, and is disappointed when there come back only my poor two." And Katrin becked and nodded and set her head to the side--like to the divine Io-Cow playing at being little Jenny Wren.
And as for me, I kept my gravity--or, rather, how could I lose it, hearing such nonsense about that great stupid beer-vat, Michael Texel.
Michael Texel, indeed! I should admire to hear of Michael Texel so much as raising his eyes to the Little Playmate.