inafores, and last, but not least, _never_ to play with the Chamois!

"They are too wild and frivolous," the Goat-mother used to say, with a
nod of her frilled cap. "Such very long springs are in exceedingly bad
taste. The Chamois have _no_ repose of manner."

Under this system the children grew up very well-behaved. The
daughters worked in the house, the sons helped their father; and in
the evening they all descended to the Glacier to collect any remnants
of food left by the endless stream of visitors, who all through the
summer toiled up to the Eismeer, and down again to the Inn on the
other side of the valley.

These travellers were a perpetual source of interest and amusement to
the Goat family.

They could never quite make out what they were doing, but the
Heif-mother finally decided that their journeys must be some religious
or national observance.

"People would never struggle about on the ice like that--tied to each
other with ropes, too!--unless it was a painful duty," she said. "I
consider it very praiseworthy."

Sometimes the young Goats in their invisible eyrie, would go off into
shouts of merriment as a group of excursionists crawled slowly into
sight; the ladies in their short skirts and large flapping hats,
alpenstock in hand, clinging desperately to the guides as they
ascended every slippery ice-peak.

But on these occasions the Goat-mother always reproved them.

"Remember," she would say severely, "that because people are
ridiculous you shouldn't be unmannerly. They can't help their
appearance, poor things! They may think themselves quite as good as we
are."

"Well, at all events, we don't look like _that_," said Lizbet. "I am
sure you would never allow it."

The principal news from the outer world was brought to the Heif family
by a Stein-bok pedlar, who wandered about the country with his wares,
and was so popular that he was a friend of all classes, and supplied
even the Chamois with their groceries and tobacco.

He generally arrived at the Chalet on the first of every month, and
spread out his wares on the grass plot in front of the cave, while the
Goat-mother and her children walked up and down, and bargained
good-humouredly for anything they had taken a fancy to.

CHAPTER II.

It was a bright sunny day, and the Goat-mother sat with her daughters
at the door of the cavern. The Goat-father had gone off by himself to
get some provisions at a village on the opposite side of the Glac