hought they wouldn't leave
me alone. Now they'll all want a bit. You don't mind my getting on the
bed, do you? Perhaps here they won't notice me."

While you are dressing various shock heads peer in at the door; they
evidently regard the room as a temporary menagerie. You cannot tell
whether the heads belong to boys or girls; you can only hope they are all
male. It is of no use shutting the door, because there is nothing to
fasten it by, and the moment you are gone they push it open again. You
breakfast as the Prodigal Son is generally represented feeding: a pig or
two drop in to keep you company; a party of elderly geese criticise you
from the door; you gather from their whispers, added to their shocked
expression, that they are talking scandal about you. Maybe a cow will
condescend to give a glance in.

This Noah's Ark arrangement it is, I suppose, that gives to the Black
Forest home its distinctive scent. It is not a scent you can liken to
any one thing. It is as if you took roses and Limburger cheese and hair
oil, some heather and onions, peaches and soapsuds, together with a dash
of sea air and a corpse, and mixed them up together. You cannot define
any particular odour, but you feel they are all there--all the odours
that the world has yet discovered. People who live in these houses are
fond of this mixture. They do not open the window and lose any of it;
they keep it carefully bottled up. If you want any other scent, you can
go outside and smell the wood violets and the pines; inside there is the
house; and after a while, I am told, you get used to it, so that you miss
it, and are unable to go to sleep in any other atmosphere.

We had a long walk before us the next day, and it was our desire,
therefore, to get up early, even so early as six o'clock, if that could
be managed without disturbing the whole household. We put it to our
hostess whether she thought this could be done. She said she thought it
could. She might not be about herself at that time; it was her morning
for going into the town, some eight miles off, and she rarely got back
much before seven; but, possibly, her husband or one of the boys would be
returning home to lunch about that hour. Anyhow, somebody should be sent
back to wake us and get our breakfast.

As it turned out, we did not need any waking. We got up at four, all by
ourselves. We got up at four in order to get away from the noise and the
din that was making our he