I was obliged to keep thinking of home, where just then they would be waiting for me with supper, and wondering why that boy didn't come home and where he could possibly be. Then, probably, it would occur to one or other of them, "Oh, he has gone home with his school-friend to Zutrum."

After the milk-soup came a bowl of salad in vinegar. That again was something new for me; at my home there was only salad in butter-milk, which is acid and wet and can therefore well take the place of expensive vinegar. At home we ate the greenstuff with a spoon, here one did it with a fork. I several times stabbed my mouth with the strange tool, but dared make no noise; whereas at home if such a thing happened there would have been a fine outcry.

After the salad came the largest dish of all, and this contained stewed cherries in their own juice. Now I might use the spoon again. If only it had been a bit bigger—for this black cherry stew was delicious! The company was very ceremonious. They squeezed the stones out of their mouths and put them back either on to a plate or into their fists. At home we ate the stones with the cherries.

I do not know what was talked about at table, and I was certainly quite indifferent to it, because mere talk is nothing to eat. They were louder and gayer at the servants' table than we were over at the house-father's table, because there was an old man amongst them who said the strangest things in the gravest manner at which they all laughed, until a maid said, "No, no; one must not laugh so at Kickel. It isn't right that Kickel should be laughed at."

"Who's laughing at him?" laughed a boy. "We're only laughing because we please to."

I must have overheard that, as otherwise I should not have known it. I know also that suddenly the old Kickel jumped up from his place, and with his shirt-sleeve fluttering from his wide, strong arm, chucked a cherry-stone at the door opposite, which fell back again into the middle of the room. At that he cried "Bang!" and shouted with laughter. He did this several times, whereupon the others said, "It was quite right, and he must make a hole in the door so that one could look out into the kitchen to see whether or no stew was being cooked to-day." Then Kickel raised his other arm, and "Bang!"—he threw the entire handful at the door, so that it rattled like a hail-storm. At the same moment the old man wrinkled up his wizened face and shouted out an angry curse.

Then the house-father got up from our table, went to the infuriated old fellow and said soothingly, "Now, now, Kickel, don't be so vexed. Sowing so many cherry-trees in the rooms! None of them will grow, you know. Be sensible, Kickel." At my home the father would have talked very differently if such a person had strewn the room full of cherry-stones!

Then the old servant stood before the house-father with folded hands, and in a voice of groaning anxiety he cried, "Zutrum, Zutrum, I don't know how to help myself, it's coming on again!"

"Michel! Natzel!" said the house-father to the other two men, "take Kickel to bed. It is time for him to go to sleep."

Then they led Kickel away. Whatever did it mean?