The maids, already partly decked out in their finery, exchanged bantering remarks, bearing unmistakable reference to her, on the score of the lovers whom they had found, or hoped to find, and the flat-nosed scullion, encouraged to commit the impertinence by the winks of the head farm-hand and the coachman, asked Anna if he might not borrow her red-flowered apron and the hat with the gay-colored ribbons that Frederick, the Major’s man, had given her at Christmas.  She would certainly not need these things in the flax-room, he said, and he hoped by means of them to win the good graces of a girl who had no finery.

“Boy,” she cried with white trembling lips, “I’ll not cook you any milk soup another time when you are sick in bed, and no one bothers himself about you!” and shoving back her plate, she snatched up the empty water-pails, which it was her duty to fill afresh at the well, and went out.

“Fie,” said John, an old servant, who, having grown gray in the service of his lordship’s father, was now eating the bread of charity in the house of Baron Eichenthal.  “It is wrong to spoil the wench’s food and drink with bitter words.”

“Pshaw!” retorted the gardener, “it will not hurt her.  Since that lean-bodied toady, Frederick, has been running after her, she’s as proud as though she had angled a nobleman!”

“Pride comes before a fall!” said Lizzie, the buxom little cook, with a tender glance at the phlegmatic head farm-hand.  “Do you know that she laces?”

“Why shouldn’t she be proud,” interjected the coachman, “isn’t she the schoolmaster’s daughter!”

Frederika, the chambermaid, came into the kitchen with a heated face.  “Isn’t Anna here?” she asked, drying her forehead with her silk handkerchief.  “The master has just gone to bed, he joked a good deal”—­here she coughed, as the others cast significant glances at one another and laughed—­“and I am to tell her that she is to begin combing the flax right away, and”—­this she added on her own authority—­“she must not stop work until ten o’clock.”

“I’ll give her the message, Rika!” answered Lizzie.  Frederika tripped out again.

“Doesn’t she lace too?” asked the head farm-hand.

“Chut!  Chut!” whispered John, and jingled his fork against his plate in embarrassment.  Anna entered the kitchen with her load of water.

“Anna,” began Lizzie officiously, “I am to tell you—­”

“I know all about it already,” answered Anna drily, in a steady voice.  “I met the messenger.  Where is the key to the flax-room hanging?”

“Over there on the nail!” replied the cook, and pointed with her finger to the place.