and space between their last cup of water and their first cup of coffee
which are prescribed at Carlsbad; but the Marches were aware somehow
from the beginning that Pupp's had not the hold upon the world at
breakfast which it had at the mid-day dinner, or at supper on the
evenings when the concert was there. Still it was amusing, and they were
patient of Burnamy's delay till he could get a morning off from Stoller
and go with them to the Posthof. He met Mrs. March in the reading-room,
where March was to join them on his way from the springs with his bag
of bread. The earlier usage of buying the delicate pink slices of
Westphalia ham, which form the chief motive of a Carlsbad breakfast, at
a certain shop in the town, and carrying them to the cafe with you, is
no longer of such binding force as the custom of getting your bread at
the Swiss bakery. You choose it yourself at the counter, which begins
to be crowded by half past seven, and when you have collected the
prescribed loaves into the basket of metallic filigree given you by one
of the baker's maids, she puts it into a tissue-paper bag of a gay red
color, and you join the other invalids streaming away from the bakery,
their paper bags making a festive rustling as they go.

Two roads lead out of the town into the lovely meadow-lands, a good mile
up the brawling Tepl, before they join on the right side of the torrent,
where the Posthof lurks nestled under trees whose boughs let the sun and
rain impartially through upon its army of little tables. By this time
the slow omnibus plying between Carlsbad and some villages in the valley
beyond has crossed from the left bank to the right, and keeps on past
half a dozen other cafes, where patients whose prescriptions marshal
them beyond the Posthof drop off by the dozens and scores.

The road on the left bank of the Tepl is wild and overhung at points
with wooded steeps, when it leaves the town; but on the right it is
bordered with shops and restaurants a great part of its length. In leafy
nooks between these, uphill walks begin their climb of the mountains,
from the foot of votive shrines set round with tablets commemorating
in German, French, Russian, Hebrew, Magyar and Czech, the cure of
high-well-borns of all those races and languages. Booths glittering
with the lapidary's work in the cheaper gems, or full of the ingenious
figures of the toy-makers, alternate with the shrines and the cafes on
the way to the Posthof, and w