There is a sober gayety and rejoicing about the elders, a suppressed merriment about the youngsters.  They do not expect much waiting upon before the feast.  They know that a strong but silent friendship exists between them all and their host—­that they are ready to help each other in any possible emergency without making a fuss about it.  So the Hofbauer can walk back leisurely from church, and Kathi can attend to her onerous duties in the kitchen, without a single visitor feeling slighted.

Soon the crowd of simple guests is seated at table in the large sitting-room, which we have vacated for the occasion.  The Hofbauer stands at a side-table and carves, and Anton in his long white apron and bib waits as serving-man.  Onkel Johann, however, sits at table.  The aunt and Moidel are busy dishing below:  they will have their share of good things when they go to the return feasts.  Of pickings and leavings there are none:  it would be an insult to send away a half-emptied plate; and for the same reason no dish is left untouched, though it is a banquet that might even satiate a work-house.  Soup, sausage, roast veal, baked apples and stewed prunes; stewed liver, fried liver, millet pudding; boiled beef with horseradish and beet-root; hung beef; cabbage dished with tongue and pork; noodles; and then a second soup to wash down what has gone before, but followed by more substantial in the form of liver-cake, in which that ingredient has been baked with bread-crumbs, eggs, onions and raisins.  Then come batter dumplings, one sort of knoedel sprinkled with poppy-seeds, roast beef with salad, and finally coffee.

There is little talking; only a clatter of plates, dishes, knives and forks as the honest guests deliberately but persistently vanquish each stage of the feast.

After coffee, “the mother’s own sister” is called aside by Kathi, in order that she, for her own and the dear dead Hofbauerin’s sake (of whom, bless her! in Kathi’s eyes she is the very image), may be privately presented to us, the foreign Herrschaft.  A comely, compact little figure, with delicate features, small hands and feet, and a pair of dove-like eyes.

Wishing to be polite, she says it is gar curios that any of the Herrschaft should understand German.  Immediately she fears this implies ignorance on our part, and adds an apology:  “But certainly such Herrschaft who are so up in things of heaven and earth would know German.”

Then she waits with a sense of relief for one of us to speak.  At this moment, however, a bevy of bright, cheerful little peasant-girls, who have been hovering in the distance, taking courage, approach and cluster in a ring around her.  She shows by her face that she fears this is a liberty, but is nevertheless relieved by their supporting her.  We ask their names, and she goes off into a string of Madels, Lisies, Nannies, who all smile spontaneously, and have not only to set her right as to their ages, but, to their infinite astonishment, as to their relationship to herself.