“Because there are folks in the world without ambition, who like to live a quiet, decent, homely life.  Every girl can’t marry a Geheimer-Ober-Hofbaurath.  Ziska, now, is much more likely to marry the young doctor here.”

“Oh, indeed! and live here all her days.  She couldn’t do better.  Happy Franziska!”

We went indoors.  It was a low, large, rambling place, with one immense room all hung round with roe-deers’ horns, and with one lesser room fitted up with a billiard-table.  The inn lay a couple of hundred yards back from Huferschingen; but it had been made the headquarters of the keepers, and just outside this room there were a number of pegs for them to sling their guns and bags on when they came in of an evening to have a pipe and a chopin of white wine.  Ziska’s uncle and aunt were both large, stout, and somnolent people, very good-natured and kind, but a trifle dull.  Ziska really had the management of the place, and she was not slow to lend a hand if the servants were remiss in waiting on us.  But that, it was understood, was done out of compliment to our small Queen Tita.

By-and-by we sat down to dinner, and Franziska came to see that everything was going on straight.  It was a dinner “with scenery.”  You forgot to be particular about the soup, the venison, and the Affenthaler when from the window at your elbow you could look across the narrow valley and behold a long stretch of the Black Forest shining in the red glow of the sunset.  The lower the sun sank the more intense became the crimson light on the tall stems of the pines; and then you could see the line of shadow slowly rising up the side of the opposite hill until only the topmost trees were touched with fire.  Then these too lost it, and all the forest around us seemed to have a pale-blue mist stealing over it as the night fell and the twilight faded out of the sky overhead.  Presently the long undulations of fir grew black, the stars came out, and the sound of the stream could be heard distantly in the hollow; and then, at Tita’s wish, we went off for a last stroll in among the soft moss and under the darkness of the pines, now and again starting some great capercailzie, and sending it flying and whirring down the glades.

When we returned from that prowl into the forest, we found the inn dark.  Such people as may have called in had gone home; but we suspected that Franziska had given the neighbours a hint not to overwhelm us on our first arrival.  When we entered the big room, Franziska came in with candles; then she brought some matches, and also put on the table an odd little pack of cards, and went out.  Her uncle and aunt had, even before we went out, come and bade us good-night formally, and shaken hands all round.  They are early folk in the Black Forest.

“Where has that girl gone now?” says Charlie.  “Into that lonely billiard-room!  Couldn’t you ask her to come in here?  Or shall we go and play billiards?”