he was a well-built, handsome girl of nineteen
or twenty, with a healthy, sunburnt complexion, and dark hair plaited
into two long tails, which were taken up and twisted into a knot behind.
That you could see from a distance. But on nearer approach you found
that Franziska had really fine and intelligent features, and a pair of
frank, clear, big brown eyes that had a very straight look about them.
They were something of the eyes of a deer, indeed; wide apart, soft, and
apprehensive, yet looking with a certain directness and unconsciousness
that overcame her natural girlish timidity. Tita simply flew at her and
kissed her heartily and asked her twenty questions at once. Franziska
answered in very fair English, a little slow and formal, but quite
grammatical. Then she was introduced to Charlie, and she shook hands
with him in a simple and unembarrassed way; and then she turned to one
of the servants and gave some directions about the luggage. Finally she
begged Tita to go indoors and get off her travelling attire, which was
done, leaving us two outside.

"She's a very pretty girl," Charlie said, carelessly. "I suppose she's
sort of head cook and kitchen-maid here."

The impudence of these young men is something extraordinary.

"If you wish to have your head in your hands," I remarked to him, "just
you repeat that remark at dinner. Why, Franziska is no end of a swell.
She has two thousand pounds and the half of a mill. She has a sister
married to the Geheimer-Ober-Hofbaurath of Hesse-Cassel. She had visited
both Paris and Munich, and she has her dresses made in Freiburg."

"But why does such an illustrious creature bury herself in this valley,
and in an old inn, and go about bareheaded?"

"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