"For to-day, my dear woman," concluded Vreni, "take this bundle along, as we agreed yesterday, and keep it till I send for it. But it may be that I myself come for it, in my own carriage, and get it, if you have no objection. A drink of milk you will not refuse me in that case, and a nice cake, such as perhaps an almond tart, I shall probably bring along myself."
"You blessed child, give it here, your bundle," the peasant woman quavered, still completely under the influence of Vreni's eloquence.
Vreni therefore deposited on top of the bedding which the woman had already tied up, a huge bag containing all the girl's belongings, so that the stout-limbed woman was bearing a perfect tower of shaking and trembling baggage on her head.
"It is almost too much for me to carry at once," she complained. "Could I not come again and divide the load in halves?" she wanted to know.
"No, no," answered Vreni, "we must leave here at once, for we have to visit a whole number of wealthy relatives, and some of these are far away, the kind, you know, who have now recognized us since we have become rich ourselves. You know how the world wags."
"Yes, indeed," said the woman, "I do know, and so God keep you, and think of me now and then in your glorious new state."
Then the peasant woman trundled off with her monstrously high tower of bundles, preserving its equilibrium by skillfully balancing the weight, and behind her trudged her boy, who stood up in the center of Vreni's gaily painted bedstead, his hard head braced against the baldaquin of it in which the eye beheld stars and suns in a firmament of multicolored muslin, and like another Samson, grasping with his red fists the two prettily carved slender pillars in front which supported the whole. As Vreni, leaning against Sali, watched the procession meandering down between the gardens of the nearer houses, and the aforesaid little temple forming part of her whilom bedstead, she remarked: "That would still make a fine little arbor or garden pavilion if placed in the midst of a sunny garden, with a small table and a bench inside, and quickly growing vines planted around. Eh, Sali, wouldn't you like to sit there with me in the shade?"
"Why, yes, Vreni," said he, smiling, "especially if the vines once had grown to a size."
"But why not go now?" continued she. "Nothing more is holding us here."
"True," he assented. "Come, then, and lock up the house. But to whom will you deliver up the key?"