Our way back led us across the hay-field, where the lasses were bustling to finish in time for some evening's diversion, the nature of which was a secret. I proposed to help them, threw off my coat, seized a fork, and flung the hay up to the lass in the wagon quicker than she could trim it. Röschen took a rake, and had enough to do in gathering up the heaps which, pitching too vigorously, I sent clean over the wagon. All at once, as I was stooping, down came a mountain on my back, and the three lasses, taking advantage of my fall, came piling heap on heap above me—Pelion upon Ossa—till I was well-nigh smothered, and they went almost wild with laughter. They sat down to recover themselves; but when they saw me, after laborious thrust and heave, come creeping ingloriously out, their jocund mirth broke out again, and provoked me into a spirit of retaliation.
"As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure,
The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure."
Then we fell to work once more, and when the wagon was laden I showed to the ragged urchin who was hired to drive, three of the lumbering old copper coins, bigger than penny-pieces, which pass for kreutzers in the neighbourhood, and at sight thereof he made the old horse drag the load home and come back for another in less time than horse had ever accomplished the task in Ulrichsthal. The second load was the last: by the time it was all pitched up our shadows grew long, and we followed it up to the house, where the mother had coffee and Semmel ready for us.
Now Röschen, reminding me once more of my promise to be tractable, revealed the secret. Karl was coming down, and Gottfried—the sweetheart I had seen the night before—and perhaps another, and then we were all to go to the Wirthshaus, about half an hour's walk. Presently the young men came in, and the lasses having changed their rustic garb for holiday gowns and dangling gold ear-drops, we walked in procession across fields to the rendezvous. A shout of welcome greeted our arrival from the young fellows already assembled—the Londoner was duly introduced, and treated by the host with especial favour, and we all sat down to a table, every man with his tankard of beer. The cup circulated literally, the custom being that everybody should drink from everybody's tankard. The lasses took their turn, though modestly and with discretion, as became them. The talk crackled merrily for awhile, and when it flagged a small tray bearing a set of little ninepins which were to be knocked down by a teetotum was placed on the table. The pins were so contrived that they could be all erected at once by pulling a string at one end of the tray, and the game went round not less briskly than the tankards, shouts of laughter repaying him who set the teetotum a-spinning without molestation to the pins. Then I proposed a song, and Karl charmed all ears with a musical ditty: another followed with a harmonious ballad, which had a chorus for burden, and as the tuneful harmony filled the room I could not help contrasting it with what would have been heard in a similar rustic alehouse in England. The ballad led to a talk about poetry, and one and another recited stanzas of favourite poems, and all seemed familiar with the best authors, drawing illustrations from Bürger's Lenore, Schiller's Song of the Bell, Goethe's Erl King, and one or two ventured upon the Niebelungenlied.
The moon was high in heaven when we broke up, and gently the night wind swept across the fields laden with the freshness of dew. As we walked along the narrow paths Gottfried had to undergo a test: his maiden plucked a large ox-eye daisy, pulled the petals off one by one, keeping time with a few spoken surmises[E]:
"Du liebst mich vom Herzen,
mit Schmerzen,
ein Wenig,
oder gar nicht."