he
horses."

"Yes, I'm coming out d'rectly. Take a boy with you to hold the sorrel:
he won't fall into the harness well."

"Oh, never you mind: I'll look out for all that," said the ploughman,
walking away heavily. The teacher shook his head.

Agnes cleared the table, and hastened to the kitchen to exchange notes
with the hired girls about the stranger.

"A good-looking chap enough," said Legata, the oldest, Agnes' special
confidant. "He looked at you: I didn't know whether he wanted to give
you a kiss or a slap. Wouldn't he do for you? He's a single man."

"I'd rather be single myself till a cow's worth a copper."

"You're right," said another girl: "why, he feeds himself with both
hands. Did you mind how he held the knife in his right hand and his
fork in his left? Who ever saw an honest man doing the like of that?"

Until a very short time ago not only the peasantry, but _all_ classes,
of Germany, ate with the fork alone, which they held in the right fist
and handled like a shovel.

"Yes," said a third: "he never got outside of his father's dunghill
before, I bet you. He cut the dumplings with his knife, instead of
pulling them to pieces; so they got as tough as tallow. Served him
right, for a tallow-head as he is. He gulped at 'em till I thought he'd
choke."

While the girls were thus washing the dishes and overhauling the guest,
the conversation in the room had taken a turn not calculated to remove
the unfavorable impressions already produced on the teacher's mind.

"By your talk," said Buchmaier, "I should judge you were raised in the
lowlands."

"Not exactly: I am from the Tauber Valley."

"Oh, we're not so particular about that: we call it all lowlands the
other side of Boeblingen. What's the name of your place?"

The teacher hesitated a little, laid his hands upon his breast, and
finally answered, with a bend of the head, "Lauterbach."

Buchmaier burst into a shout of laughter, which the teacher received in
solemn earnestness. At last the former said, "Don't take it amiss: why,
Lauterbach,--every child knows of Lauterbach,--it's in the song, you
know. What made you hem and haw about it? There's no shame in't, I'm
sure. Now, couldn't you tell me--I always wanted to know--why did they
just put Lauterbach into the song?"

"How should I know? I suppose there is no reason for it. These stupid
songs are generally made by simpletons who take any town they happen to
think of, if it fits the metre: I