Kurt had climbed a tree and from the highest branch he could reach was searchingly studying the castle, as if something special was to be discovered there.  Maezli, having discovered some strawberries, had pulled Lippo along with her.  She wanted him to pick those she had found while she hunted for more in the meantime.  The mother was very busy keeping an eye on them all.  Kurt might become too daring in his climbing feats.  Maezli might run away too far and Lippo might put his strawberries into his trousers-pocket as he had done once already, and cause great harm to his little Sunday suit.

“You fuss and worry too much about the children,” Uncle Philip said.  “Just let the children simply grow, saying to them once in a while, ’If you don’t behave, you’ll be locked up.’”

“Yes, that certainly sounds simple,” said his sister.  “It is a pity you have no brood of your own to bring up, Philip, as lively as mine, and each child entirely different from the others, so that one has to be urged to a thing that another has to be kept from.  I get the cares without looking for them.  A new great worry has come to me to-day, which even you won’t be able to just push aside.”

Mrs. Maxa told her brother now about the morning’s interview with the wife of the district attorney.  She told him of the problem she had with Bruno’s further education, because the lessons he had been having from the Rector would end in the fall, and of her firm intention of keeping him from living together with his two present comrades.  The three had never yet come together without bringing as a result some mean deed on one side and an explosion of rage on the other.

“Don’t you think, Philip, that it will be a great care for me to think that the three are living under one roof?  Don’t you think so yourself?” Mrs. Maxa concluded.

“Oh, Maxa, that is an old story.  There have been boys at all times who fought together and then made peace again.”

“Philip, that does not console me,” the sister answered.  “That has never been Bruno’s way at all.  He never fights that way.  But it is hard to tell what he might do in a fit of anger at some injustice or meanness, and that is what frightens me so.”

“His godfather of the same name has probably passed that on to him.  Nobody more than you, Maxa, has always tried to wash him clean and excuse him for all his deeds of anger.  In your indestructible admiration ...”

Uncle Philip got no further, as all the children now came running toward them.  The two little ones both tried hard to put the biggest strawberries they had found into the mouths of their mother and uncle.  Mea could not hold her magnificent bunch of forget-me-nots near enough to their eyes to be admired.  The two older boys had approached, too, as they had an announcement to make.  The sun had gone down behind the mountain, so they had remembered that it was time to go home.

Mother and uncle rose from their seats and the whole group started down the mountainside.  The two little ones were gaily trotting beside the uncle, bursting into wild shouting now and then, for he made such leaps that they flew high into the air sometimes.  He held them so firmly, however, that they always reached the ground safely.