"Get out of the way?" the tall woman repeated. "This wood belongs to the town, Fräulein; the poorest has just as good a right here as the richest. I should like to see any one drive me away!" She planted herself in the path more broadly than before. "Come, look, all of ye! Such as we don't often have a chance to see that face, except in a grand coach, with the horses tearing around the corners and trying to drive over poor people. You are a beauty, Fräulein: your worst enemy can't deny that. All real,—nothing laid on,—a skin like silk and velvet,—good enough to eat." She thrust her face close under the white hat.
The woman who had run before Kitty pushed herself into the circle. "Here comes another!" she cried, pointing back towards the young girl.
Those nearest her involuntarily turned to look, leaving an opening in their midst. There stood Flora, her lips and cheeks white as snow, evidently hardly able to stand, in vain attempting to retain her haughty carriage.
"We don't care for her!" a boy cried out, and the circle closed again more densely than before.
"Kitty!" Henriette's voice was heard in helpless terror from behind the living wall; but the cry was instantly smothered, evidently by a hand laid upon her mouth. In an instant three or four of the boys were thrust staggering aside, and even the gigantic woman yielded to Kitty's strong arm as she made her way to her sisters and placed herself in front of them. "What do you want?" she asked, in a loud, firm voice.
For one moment the assailants were dismayed; but only for one moment. This was but a girl, and of what avail could she be to help? They closed around her with loud bursts of laughter.
"Body and bones o' me! she asks her questions like a judge on the bench!" cried the giantess, putting her arms akimbo on her broad hips.
"Yes, and looks as proud as if she were come direct from the three kings of Cologne," added the woman with the purple kerchief on her head. "Hark ye! your grandmother belonged to my village; never when I knew her did she have shoe or stocking to her foot; and I remember very well, too, when your grandfather fed and drove old miller Klaus's horses——"
"Do you suppose I do not know it, or that I am ashamed of it?" Kitty interrupted her, calmly and coldly, although her stern face had grown very pale.
"What need?—you have his money,—heaps of money!" cried a third, pressing close to the young girl and snatching at the skirt of her dress, which she rubbed in her grimy fingers. "A fine gown this!—a holiday gown!—and worn, too, o' week-days, and in the woods, where the thorns might tear it to shreds! No matter for that,—there's money enough: they found basketfuls of it when the old man died. But no one asks where it came from. It's all the same to you, Fräulein, if the castle miller did buy away the grain from poor people who needed it, and lock it up in his granaries, and then declare he would not sell a shovelful of it until the price had risen to what he wanted,—no, not although the people squeaked like starving mice——"