On a clear morning in August there were so many cooking fires burning at the Oberhof that it seemed as if they might be expecting the entire population of all the surrounding towns to dinner.  Over the hearth fire, built up to unusual size with great logs and fagots, there was hanging on a notched iron hook the very largest kettle that the household possessed.  Six or seven iron pots stood round these fires with their contents boiling and bubbling.  In the space before the house, toward the oak grove, there were crackling, if history reports the truth, nine fires, and an equal number, or at the most one less, in the yard near the lindens.  Over all these cooking-places jacks or roasters had been erected, on which frying-pans were resting, or on which kettles of no small size were hanging, although none of them could compare in capacity with the one which was doing duty over the hearth fire.

The maids of the Oberhof were briskly hurrying back and forth with skimming-spoons or forks between the various cooking-places.  If the guests were to find the food palatable, there could not be any dawdling over the skimming and turning.  For in the large kettle over the hearth eight hens lent strength to the soup, and in the other twenty-three or-four pots, kettles, and pans there were boiling or roasting six hams, three turkeys, and five pigs, besides a corresponding number of hens.

While the maids were exerting themselves, the men too were industriously attending to their part of the work.  The one with the black eyes was building an immense, long table with stands, blocks, and boards, in the orchard among the flower-beds, having already completed a similar construction in the entrance-hall.  The fat, slow one was decorating with green birch twigs the gates of the house, the walls of the entrance-hall, and the doors of the two rooms in which the Pastor and his Sexton had once eaten.  He sighed deeply over this delightful green work, and the heat, too, seemed to oppress him greatly.  Nevertheless an easier task had fallen to him than to his fellow-partner, the gruff, red-haired man.  For the former had only flexible May twigs to deal with, whereas it fell to the latter to decorate the cattle for the festivity.  The red-haired man was, accordingly, gilding with gold tinsel the horns of the cows and bullocks, which were standing on one side of the entrance-hall behind their mangers, or else was tying bright-colored bows and tassels around them.  This was, in fact, a provoking task, especially for an irascible man.  For many of the cows and an occasional bullock would have absolutely nothing to do with the festival, but shook their heads and butted sideways with their horns, as often as the red-haired fellow came anywhere near them with the tinsel and brush.  For a long time he suppressed his natural instinct, and merely grumbled softly once in a while when a horn knocked the brush or the tinsel out of his hand.  These grumbles, however, scarcely