places and never went underground, a few invalids and some chattering girls and young men who had previously been through the mine and had come over from Salzburg for the drive, and some very fine youths and young women who wouldn’t be seen in a miner’s costume.  There were a score or more of these travellers, and as many more coachmen, and miners off duty, hanging about.  A building on the opposite side of the road was indicated to us ladies as the place in which we were to change our costumes.  Now, here was a pleasant gauntlet to run in male attire!  However, a hundred strangers were not to deter us, and, possibly, this costume might be becoming.  There were worse figures in the world than ours, and who knew but this miners’ dress might show our forms to an advantage at which they had never been seen before?  Encouraged by the thought, we gave our treasures into safe keeping and permitted the attendant to disrobe us.  She spoke a dialect which had little meaning to us, and we carried on our conversation by signs.

She hung our habiliments on pegs, giving Elise’s a little womanly caress for their prettiness.  She brought in exchange a costume which made us helpless from laughter, until we were painfully sobered by the thought of the spectators outside.  A pair of white duck trousers that might have been made of pasteboard, so stiff were they and so defined the crease ironed at their sides, came first.  Our measures were not taken.  The attendant accommodatingly turned them up about ten inches at the bottom, the edge then coming to our ankles, which somehow looked very insignificant and as if protruding from paper shoe-boxes that had been sat upon.  These nether garments extended beyond us at either side to such a distance that that roundness of form which we had fancied this costume might display was not in the least perceptible.  A black alpaca jacket reaching to our knees came next.  These, too, had been warranted to fit the biggest woman who might visit the Salzkammergut, and one would easily have taken in all three of us.  Elise, always ingenious, found hers so long on the shoulder that she fitted her elbow into the armsize.  We pinned them up here and pinned them in there, and tucked our hair into little black caps, and fastened the broad leather belt about our waists, stuck a lantern in at the side, and announced ourselves in readiness.  The dressing-maid, however, was not done with us.  She brought three very heavy leathern aprons, attached to strong waist-bands.  The leather was three-quarters of an inch thick; and I need not add that these square aprons did not take graceful folds.  Elise, after regarding the curious article a moment, decided it would be no addition to her toilet, and politely declined it.  Cecilia’s nez retrousse went yet higher up in the air.  Feeling that the maid knew better than I, I meekly put one on as I had been taught from my babyhood to wear an apron, when a sudden twitch brought it around behind.  She quickly