weeks, but it was _too_
hot! Nora was pale and Reggie's noble appetite gave signs of flagging.
Besides--as I had said to Ottilia--it would be too absurd to have come
so far and not see the lions of the neighbourhood.

So we were to start the next morning for an excursion in the so-called
"Forest," in the company of Herr von Walden, his wife and son, and two
young men, friends of the latter. We were to travel by rail over the
first part of the ground, uninteresting enough, till we reached a point
where we could make our way on foot through the woods for a considerable
distance. Then, after spending the night in a village whose beautiful
situation had tempted some enterprising speculator to build a good
hotel, we proposed the next day to plunge still deeper into the real
recesses of the forest, walking and driving by turns, in accordance
with our inclination and the resources of the country in respect of
_Einspaenners_--the light carriage with the horse invariably yoked at one
side of the pole instead of between shafts, in which one gets about more
speedily and safely than might be imagined. And at the end of three or
four days of this, weather permitting, agreeably nomad life, our friends
the Waldens, obliged to return to their home in the town from which we
started, were to leave my children and me for a fortnight's country air
in this same village of Silberbach which Ottilia so vehemently objected
to. I did not then, I do not now, know--and I am pretty sure he himself
could not say--why our guide, Herr von Walden, had chosen Silberbach
from among the dozens of other villages which could quite as well--as
events proved, indeed, infinitely better--have served our very simple
purpose. It was a chance, as such things often are, but a chance which,
as you will see, left its mark in a manner which can never be altogether
effaced from my memory.

The programme was successfully carried out. The weather was magnificent.
Nobody fell ill or footsore, or turned out unexpectedly bad-tempered.
And it was hot enough, even in the forest shades, which we kept to as
much as possible, to have excused some amount of irritability. But we
were all sound and strong, and had entered into a tacit compact of
making the best of things and enjoying ourselves as much as we could.
Nora and Reggie perhaps, by the end of the second day, began to have
doubts as to the delights of indefinitely continued walking excursions;
and though they would not h