“Look as though you weren’t going to be photographed,” he suggested.  “Liza, for goodness’ sake look as though you were baking the bread; and Hans, try and believe that you are doing some of your beautiful carving.”

The patience of the photographer was something wonderful.  At last he succeeded in making them appear at their ease.  And then he told Liza that she must go and change her dress, and be photographed now in the way he wished.  She came down again, looking fifty times prettier in her working clothes.

Now he was in his element.  He arranged Liza and Hans on the sledge of timber, which had then driven up, and made a picturesque group of them all:  Hans and Liza sitting side by side on the timber, the horses standing there so patiently after their long journey through the forests, the driver leaning against his sledge smoking his long china pipe.

“That will be something like a picture,” he said to Bernardine, when the performance was over.  “Now I am going for about a mile’s walk.  Will you come with me and see what I am going to photograph, or will you rest here till I come back?”

She chose the latter, and during his absence was shown the treasures and possessions of a Swiss peasant’s home.

She was taken to see the cows in the stalls, and had a lecture given her on the respective merits of Schneewitchen, a white cow, Kartoffelkuehen, a dark brown one, and Roeslein, the beauty of them all.  Then she looked at the spinning-wheel, and watched the old Hausfrau turn the treadle.  And so the time passed, Bernardine making, good friends of them all.  Catharina had returned to her knitting, and began working, and, as before, not noticing any one.  But Bernardine sat by her side, playing with the cat, and after a time Catharina looked up at Bernardine’s little thin face, and, after some hesitation, stroked it gently with her hand.

“Fraeulein is not strong,” she said tenderly.  “If Fraeulein lived here, I should take care of her.”

That was a remnant of Catharina’s past.  She had always loved everything that was ailing and weakly.

Her hand rested on Bernardine’s hand.  Bernardine pressed it in kindly sympathy, thinking the while of the girl’s past happiness and resent bereavement.

“Liza is betrothed,” she said, as though to herself.  “They don’t tell me; but I know.  I was betrothed once.”

She went on knitting.  And that was all she said of herself.

Then after a pause she said: 

“Fraeulein is betrothed?”

Bernardine smiled, and shook her head, and Catharina made no further inquiries.  But she looked up from her work from time to time, and seemed pleased that Bernardine still stayed with her.  At last the old mother came to say that the coffee was ready, and Bernardine followed her into the parlour.

She watched Bernardine drinking the coffee, and finally poured herself out a cup too.