lroad station, and the playing of the
guitar, which the little man practised a good deal, with the
accompaniment of his own whistling. He had also a secret service.

There appeared to be a tacit agreement at the table, that they should
make no reply to anything that Lutz said; he only received a smile from
the second female cook, with whom he had a tender but not acknowledged
relation.

A man with Sarmatian features and a Polish accent claimed for Herr von
Pranken the credit of having brought the man into the house. Bertram
gave Joseph a slight nudge, and proceeded to praise Herr von Pranken in
the most eulogistic terms, while Joseph winked slyly, as if he would
say. Just so; this shows again that the Pole is in the secret service
of Herr von Pranken.

Now they speculated whether Herr von Pranken would take up his abode in
the house after his marriage with Manna, for this event was regarded as
a settled thing.

A gardener, who stammered a little, remarked that it was said at the
village inn, that Herr Sonnenkamp had been a tailor. All laughed, and
the stuttering gardener, who was the special butt of the circle, was
more and more spurred on to talk, and bantered till he became blue in
the face. Bertram, taking both waves of his long beard in his hands,
exclaimed:--

"If any one should tell me that, I'd show him how his teeth taste."

"Just let people talk," said soothingly the head-gardener, with a smile
in advance at his own wisdom, as he added, "As soon as a man gets on in
the world he must make up his mind to be slandered."

One of the hostlers gave an account of a scuffle which had taken place
between them and the servants of the so-called Wine-count, who
reproached them with being the servants of a man whom nobody knew
anything about,--who he was, or where he came from; and that one of
them had gone so far as to say that Frau Sonnenkamp was a purchased
slave.

The secret, and, in fact, not very edifying history of several families
was now related, until the stout female cook cried out at last:--

"Do stop that talk! My mother used to say, that

"'Whether houses be great or small.
There lies a stone before them all.'"

The second gardener, a lean, thin man, with a peaked face, called the
squirrel, who often had prayers with the pious people of the
neighborhood, began a very evangelical discourse about evil speaking.
He had, originally, been a gardener, then a policeman in a norther