Now they pass through the valley where old Manz was breaking stones, and now over the Holder Common, where an old woman took care of the geese. Barefoot gave her a friendly nod. “Oh, Heavens,” she thought, “how did I come to this—that I can sit here so proud and well dressed. It is but an hour’s ride to Endringen. It seems as though we had but just started, and we must already alight.”
Rose was immediately surrounded and greeted by friends. “Is that a sister of your brother’s wife that you have brought with you?” her friends asked.
“No! it is only our maid,” said Rose. Some beggars from Holdenbrunn, who were there, looked astonished; and after observing her a long time, cried “Ei! yes; that is Barefoot.”
These little words, “only our maid,” sunk deeply into Barefoot’s mind; but she recovered herself, and smiling, said to herself, “Let not a little word spoil thy pleasure. If you begin so, you will continually tread upon thorns.”
Rose took her aside and said, “Go now upon the dancing-platform, or wherever you find acquaintance. By and by when the music begins, I will see you again.”
Yes, there stood Barefoot, as though deserted. It seemed to her as though she had stolen her clothes, and had no right to be there. She was an intruder. “What was I thinking of,” she asked herself, “when I consented to come to a marriage-feast?” and she gladly would have returned home. She went in and out through the village, and passed the beautiful house that was built for the Brosis, and where there was much life to-day; for the mother of the Brosis, with her sons and daughters, had their summer residence there. Barefoot went again into the village, walked about, but would not look round, though she longed to have some one call her, that she might find a companion.
At the end of the village she met a genteel horseman upon a white horse, who was riding into the village. He wore the dress of a farmer of another part of the country, and sat on his horse proudly. He stopped, and while he held out his riding-whip in his right hand, he patted with the left the neck of his horse. “Good-morning, pretty maiden,” he said. “Already tired of the dance?”
“Of unnecessary questions I am already tired,” she answered.
The horseman rode on, and Amrie sat a long time behind a hazel-hedge, where thoughts crowded upon her, and her cheeks crimsoned with shame and anger at the petulant answer she had given to a harmless question. Perplexity, and an incomprehensible internal agitation came over her. Involuntarily the song of the lovers came to her lips:
“There were two lovers in Allgäu,