"Oh, patatata!" said the lady, with a shrug, "here's mighty fine talk! Manage your own affairs, my dear. I'll say no more."
She leaned her plump arms on the window-sill again and turned her back on her niece with an air of determined sullenness.
Sidonia was very angry. She sat down on the high-backed chair and set the ancient spinning wheel whirring with a hand that trembled.
"One thing is certain," she resumed in a choked voice, "if I ever do marry, Aunt Betty, I shall choose my own husband."
"Of course, among the crowds that besiege the gay Burg of Wellenshausen, up in the clouds, my sweet creature," said the Burgravine, without turning her head, "you will have only l'embarras du choix and then——" But here she interrupted herself with a sharp ejaculation. Her fingers ceased their angry tune. She swung back the window a trifle wider and leaned out further than she had ventured upon her threat of suicide. "Look, look!" she cried in altered tones. "Do you see? There are two men coming up the road with a pack-horse. No, 'tis a donkey!"
"Look, look, do you see? ... There are two men coming up the road with a pack-horse. No, 'tis a donkey."
Sidonia sprang up and leaned out eagerly across her aunt's shoulder. They were but a pair of children of different ages, when all was said and done.
"It can only be the miller's boy and the gardener ... or the shepherd," opined she.
"Oh, yes, the very outline of humpback John and the swing of bandy Peperl!" (This was sarcastic.) "To the hangman with these evening mists! Now, now, see! a gentleman, or I'm a goose-girl ... a young man, or I'm a grandmother! Poor things, how they toil!"