The good soul stands calmly this battery of juvenile reproaches: "Ho, are not you all my children? Have I not brought you all through the measles, knitted the stockings for all your feet, until I taught you to knit for yourselves? Souls and bodies, you are all dear to me: I treat you all alike."
She looks so lovingly on them that they are not quite sure whether they have done right or wrong in correcting her. So they stand a dumb, admiring circle, whilst she adds:
"If the Herrschaft ever could get as far as Pfalzen, where I and the children live, they would find no great big house like the Hof, but plenty of small, snug farms amidst corn-fields, in any one of which the Hof-Herrschaft would be made welcome, but more especially in mine. It is not so very far. See from the window! There, over Sankt Jörgen and over the woods rises our tall spire with two other spires; only these are quite a long way from each other, though they are all mixed-like at a distance, just as I mix up the young people. The Herrschaft will not forget the name—Pfalzen?"
Having brought out this invitation with a great effort, she now plunges into a sea of fears as to the liberty she has taken. So one of the Herrschaft, rashly coming to her assistance, assured her it would be impossible for her at least to forget the name of Pfalzen. Somebody had told her of a certain tailor of Pfalzen who, within memory of man, returning from a wedding at Percha, and having passed St. George on his homeward way at eight o'clock of the evening, suddenly saw the road divide before him. This made him stop in astonishment, and before he could decide which way to take it had grown dark. Then he became sore afraid, especially when he espied a group of ladies dressed in white, who came up to him, and, addressing him in playful tones, encompassed and stopped him. He, however, could not stand this, and speaking in a loud tone he reproached them, for, though they were ladies, he soon saw by their rude looks that they meant him mischief. Then they began abusing and tormenting him, until he laid himself down on the ground with his face to the earth. Now the spell seemed broken, for, though the spiteful women remained, they were restrained from hurting him; and with the first sound of the morning Angelus these white ladies, who were nothing but tormenting spirits, fled, and he, rising up, went on his way home.
"Herr Je!" said the gentle little woman, "could it have been the Hof Moidel who told you that? Or could you have heard it at Percha? or by the fire some winter evening? But you have never been in these parts in winter. The tailor, you see, must have found the wedding-wine too strong."
"Barbara the sewing-woman—" began a young voice, which immediately collapsed, the speaker retreating with great impetuosity behind her mother or aunt, whichever it might be.
Then each little member of the maidenly circle looked very odd, and their good relative uttered hurriedly but mildly, "Oh, it's nothing. How could you, Lisi? Behave yourselves, children!"
However, an explanation of the sewing-woman Barbara being pleaded for on our part, the good woman nervously continued: "It is only a foolish story. Only that the sewing-woman Barbara was sweet on Weaver Thomas, and he could not abide her. 'I would rather,' he told her, 'be a beast in the stall than be your wedded husband.' The sewing-woman said he should rue the day he thus insulted her. And sure enough, from that time he could neither eat nor drink, growing poor and thin in the body. Everybody said, 'Sewing-woman Barbara has struck him with the evil eye.' I am not sure but that his teeth chattered, which they say is a sign. A miller urged him to have the letters I.N.R.I. stitched into his clothes (it is a wonderful preservative on corn-bins and stable doors against the evil eye), but Weaver Thomas replied he was sick of stitching. Yet what is to become of the man? Not a drop of wine does he touch now but it flies to his head—not a kreuzer of his hard-earned money does he put into his pocket but it oozes away like water. Ah, it is an ugly story! I wish there were no such fearsome, boggy things. The world would be better without them."
By this time a fat lad had ventured up, and stood gaping behind the maidens. He was not of Pfalzen, but the girls spoke to him as a cousin of the house. In spite of their encouragement, he merely gaped and stared, without answering a word. The pleasures of the table had, in fact, brought him into a state of speechless discomfort. It was not of wine that he had partaken, though it had freely circulated, to judge by the great empty gallon bottles, but he had stuck loyally to the principles laid down and acted on by his elders, of doing full justice to the dishes. Feeling now, therefore, exceedingly the worse for his praiseworthy exertions, he remained leaning disconsolately with his back against the wall long after the church-bells had struck up a merry clang, vigorously calling the Hofbauer, his men-servants and maid-servants and the strangers who were within his gates, to church. Good Kathi, however, whilst clearing away the empty glasses, looked compassionately upon him as on one of her fattening chickens in danger of pip, and patiently inveigled him to a cozy nook down stairs, where his heavy breathing and steady snorts kept time to her monotonous dish-washing. On he slept during prayers, during the hour spent at the Blauen Bock, when the Hofbauer treated the priest and his guests on this auspicious thanksgiving-day. He woke up, however, to do his duty like a man "with a mouthful of supper" whilst the horses were being put into the gigs. Then, in a state of heavy, speechless resignation, he was conveyed to his seat between a bauer and his wife, which, though a tight fit in the morning, had strangely become tighter, and where, circumstances thus pinning his arms to his side, and with his aching head upon his breast in the most uncomfortable of attitudes, the poor fat boy was jolted away in the twilight.
The other relations, all weightier mortals, more or less, than when they arrived, were packed and squeezed into their creaking vehicles; the very small vacuums remaining on or under the seats, to say nothing of broad laps, being filled with krapfen. You would indeed have supposed that the Hof were one great patent krapfen manufactory, with the sole right of making, baking by steam and selling these indigestible, leathery, yet brittle puffs so dear to the Tyrolese palate, had not the figures of men, women and children, humble guests at more modest dwellings, been seen filing along the highway or crossing the moorland slopes, each bearing a light but bulging bundle of krapfen tied up in a gay blue, crimson or yellow handkerchief.