more horrified than her
mistress when she saw the farm cart, and understood that it was for the
luggage and the maid. It was impossible to take her with them in what
the porter called the _herrschaftliche Wagen_, for it was a kind of
victoria, and how to get their four selves into it was a sufficient
puzzle. "What shall we do?" said Susie, in despair, to Anna.

"Do? Why, she'll have to go in it. Hilton, don't be a foolish person,
and don't keep us here in the wet. This isn't England, and nobody thinks
anything here of driving in farm carts. It is patriarchal simplicity,
that's all. People are staring at you now because you are making such a
fuss. Get in like a good soul, and let us start."

"Only as a corpse, m'm," reiterated Hilton with chattering teeth, "never
as a living body."

"Nonsense," said Anna impatiently.

"What shall we do?" repeated Susie. "Poor Hilton--what barbarians they
must be here."

"We must send her in a _Droschky_, then, if it isn't too far, and we can
get one to go."

"A _Droschky_ all that distance! It will be ruinous."

"Well, we can't stand here amusing these people for ever."

"Oh, I wish we had never come to this horrible place!" cried Susie,
really made miserable by Hilton's rage.

But Anna did not stay to listen either to her laments or to Hilton's
monotonous "Only as a corpse, m'lady," and was already arranging with an
unwilling driver, who had no desire whatever to drive to Kleinwalde, but
consented to do so on being promised twenty marks, a rest and feed of
oats for his horses, and any little addition in the shape of refreshment
and extra money that might suggest itself to Anna's generosity.

"You know, Anna, you can't expect _me_ to pay for the fly," said Susie
uneasily, when the appeased Hilton had been put into it and was out of
earshot. "That dreadful cart is your property, I suppose."

"Of course it is," said Anna, smiling, "and of course the fly is my
affair. How magnificent I feel, disposing of carts and _Droschkies_.
Now, will you please to get into my carriage? And do you observe the
extreme respectfulness of my coachman?"

The coachman, a strange-looking, round-shouldered being, with a long
grizzled beard, a dark-blue cloth cap on his head, and a body clothed in
a fawn-coloured suit and gaiters, on which a great many tarnished silver
buttons adorned with Uncle Joachim's coat of arms were fastened at short
intervals, removed his cap while his new mistress and her