Although the peasant bathers as a class made no distinct impression on us, the half dozen men looking like facsimiles of each other, and the seven women appearing always to be one and the same, still there were one or two figures which stand prominently forth, from the more direct relations into which we came with them.

First, an old peasant-woman, whom we heard, as we descended from the Kronplatz, singing to a crying baby as we approached the house: 

  Engeli, Bengeli, wilt thou go to America? 
  Rumelti, Pumelti, wilt thou go to England?

She instantly stopped her ditty when she saw us emerge from the wood.

Curious, was it not? and yet we had neither brought our passports with us, nor had we followed the example of previous guests and proved our learning by writing our names and birthplaces in the visitors’ book—­a large volume for which every door-lintel and piece of wainscot in the house acted as leaves.  No, but some little bird had been whispering about us on the mountain-side.

The next figure is another peasant-woman, tall and somewhat thin, with a patient, beseeching look in her face.  This I quietly perceived whilst I sat busily writing near the house at a table which Moidel had carried out for me, yet I would not look up, because she stood eyeing me with an innocent stare, as if wishful to enter into conversation.  A few minutes later a buxom matron stepped forth from the passage of the chalet.  It acted as a convenient thoroughfare on the road between Reischach and Geisselburg.  Her daughter, a girl of sixteen, who was with her, wore two beaver hats, the uppermost evidently bran-new and a fresh purchase.  The first peasant-woman addressed the newcomer with a “God greet thee, Trina!  Thou hast been shopping, I see.”

“God greet thee, Gertraud!  It is only a new hat for the moidel.  We were going down for Scapulary Sunday; so I thought I might go on to town and sell thirty pounds of cow-hair, the savings of ten years; for, now there’s to be a railway, beds are wanted, and as I received more than I expected, Moidel got her hat.”

Then lowering her voice and pointing in my direction:  “One of the strange ladies?  I saw the other in the wood gathering strawberries.  I heard she came from America, but she was quite pretty, without either black skin or thick lips.  There must be some mistake.  But, Gertraud, how’s the sick little maid?”

“Very weak—­cannot last long.  The doctor was up yesterday, and he said it was useless his coming again:  however, he left it something soothing.  Adieu, Trina:  greet all at home.”

At first amused by the notions these fellow-creatures possessed of us, then forgetting them in the trouble which I perceived occupied the poor woman’s mind, I lifted up my head when her friends were gone and inquired if she had a sick child.