“Why, mother, I am your daughter!” says one little girl reproachfully.  “Why, aunt, my mother is dead, you know!” adds another, pulling at her sleeve and whispering this correction.  Then the whole group burst into a shy titter.

The good soul stands calmly this battery of juvenile reproaches:  “Ho, are not you all my children?  Have I not brought you all through the measles, knitted the stockings for all your feet, until I taught you to knit for yourselves?  Souls and bodies, you are all dear to me:  I treat you all alike.”

She looks so lovingly on them that they are not quite sure whether they have done right or wrong in correcting her.  So they stand a dumb, admiring circle, whilst she adds: 

“If the Herrschaft ever could get as far as Pfalzen, where I and the children live, they would find no great big house like the Hof, but plenty of small, snug farms amidst corn-fields, in any one of which the Hof-Herrschaft would be made welcome, but more especially in mine.  It is not so very far.  See from the window!  There, over Sankt Joergen and over the woods rises our tall spire with two other spires; only these are quite a long way from each other, though they are all mixed-like at a distance, just as I mix up the young people.  The Herrschaft will not forget the name—­Pfalzen?”

Having brought out this invitation with a great effort, she now plunges into a sea of fears as to the liberty she has taken.  So one of the Herrschaft, rashly coming to her assistance, assured her it would be impossible for her at least to forget the name of Pfalzen.  Somebody had told her of a certain tailor of Pfalzen who, within memory of man, returning from a wedding at Percha, and having passed St. George on his homeward way at eight o’clock of the evening, suddenly saw the road divide before him.  This made him stop in astonishment, and before he could decide which way to take it had grown dark.  Then he became sore afraid, especially when he espied a group of ladies dressed in white, who came up to him, and, addressing him in playful tones, encompassed and stopped him.  He, however, could not stand this, and speaking in a loud tone he reproached them, for, though they were ladies, he soon saw by their rude looks that they meant him mischief.  Then they began abusing and tormenting him, until he laid himself down on the ground with his face to the earth.  Now the spell seemed broken, for, though the spiteful women remained, they were restrained from hurting him; and with the first sound of the morning Angelus these white ladies, who were nothing but tormenting spirits, fled, and he, rising up, went on his way home.

“Herr Je!” said the gentle little woman, “could it have been the Hof Moidel who told you that?  Or could you have heard it at Percha? or by the fire some winter evening?  But you have never been in these parts in winter.  The tailor, you see, must have found the wedding-wine too strong.”