“How much?” the boy responded, standing in front of her with his hands behind his head, in the pose of a young, indolent conqueror.

“How much!⁠—how much!” mocked Wolf, with heavy humour, seating himself on the tree-trunk by Gerda’s side. “What a young miser we are!” As he took his place by her side, the floating barge upon which it seemed to him they were embarked rocked with a motion that gave him a sense of sweet dizziness.

Lob looked at his sister gravely, weighing the matter in his mind.

“You won’t hunt rats with him when I’m not there?” he bargained.

She shook her head.