“Barbara the sewing-woman—­” began a young voice, which immediately collapsed, the speaker retreating with great impetuosity behind her mother or aunt, whichever it might be.

Then each little member of the maidenly circle looked very odd, and their good relative uttered hurriedly but mildly, “Oh, it’s nothing.  How could you, Lisi?  Behave yourselves, children!”

However, an explanation of the sewing-woman Barbara being pleaded for on our part, the good woman nervously continued:  “It is only a foolish story.  Only that the sewing-woman Barbara was sweet on Weaver Thomas, and he could not abide her.  ‘I would rather,’ he told her, ’be a beast in the stall than be your wedded husband.’  The sewing-woman said he should rue the day he thus insulted her.  And sure enough, from that time he could neither eat nor drink, growing poor and thin in the body.  Everybody said, ’Sewing-woman Barbara has struck him with the evil eye.’  I am not sure but that his teeth chattered, which they say is a sign.  A miller urged him to have the letters I.N.R.I. stitched into his clothes (it is a wonderful preservative on corn-bins and stable doors against the evil eye), but Weaver Thomas replied he was sick of stitching.  Yet what is to become of the man?  Not a drop of wine does he touch now but it flies to his head—­not a kreuzer of his hard-earned money does he put into his pocket but it oozes away like water.  Ah, it is an ugly story!  I wish there were no such fearsome, boggy things.  The world would be better without them.”

By this time a fat lad had ventured up, and stood gaping behind the maidens.  He was not of Pfalzen, but the girls spoke to him as a cousin of the house.  In spite of their encouragement, he merely gaped and stared, without answering a word.  The pleasures of the table had, in fact, brought him into a state of speechless discomfort.  It was not of wine that he had partaken, though it had freely circulated, to judge by the great empty gallon bottles, but he had stuck loyally to the principles laid down and acted on by his elders, of doing full justice to the dishes.  Feeling now, therefore, exceedingly the worse for his praiseworthy exertions, he remained leaning disconsolately with his back against the wall long after the church-bells had struck up a merry clang, vigorously calling the Hofbauer, his men-servants and maid-servants and the strangers who were within his gates, to church.  Good Kathi, however, whilst clearing away the empty glasses, looked compassionately upon him as on one of her fattening chickens in danger of pip, and patiently inveigled him to a cozy nook down stairs, where his heavy breathing and steady snorts kept time to her monotonous dish-washing.  On he slept during prayers, during the hour spent at the Blauen Bock, when the Hofbauer treated the priest and his guests on this auspicious thanksgiving-day.  He woke up, however, to do his duty like a man “with a mouthful of supper” whilst the horses were being put into the gigs.  Then, in a state of heavy, speechless resignation, he was conveyed to his seat between a bauer and his wife, which, though a tight fit in the morning, had strangely become tighter, and where, circumstances thus pinning his arms to his side, and with his aching head upon his breast in the most uncomfortable of attitudes, the poor fat boy was jolted away in the twilight.