ing he should think of was causing the dear papa
and his lovely daughter the slightest inconvenience. He said he had
brought everything in the kitchen and cellar department with him, and
as for the lodging, he needed nothing but a little bit of ground with
the open air above it, where his people could put up his ordinary
travelling palace, which would accommodate him, his whole retinue, and
the animals pertaining to them.

Fraeulein Aennchen was so delighted with these words of the Baron
Porphyrio von Ockerodastes that, to show that she wasn't grudging a
little bit of hospitality, she was going to offer him the little
fritter cakes she had made for the last consecration day, and a small
glass of the beetroot brandy, unless he would have preferred double
bitters, which the maid had brought from the town and recommended as
strengthening to the stomach. But at this moment Cordovanspitz
announced that he had chosen the kitchen garden as the site of his
palace, and Aennchen's happiness was gone. But whilst the Baron's
retainers, in celebration of their lord's arrival at Dapsulheim,
continued their Olympian games, sometimes butting with their big heads
at each other's stomachs, knocking each other over backwards, sometimes
springing up in the air again, playing at skittles, being themselves in
turn skittles, balls, and players, and so forth, Baron Porphyrio von
Ockerodastes got into a very deep and interesting conversation with
Herr Dapsul von Zabelthau, which seemed to go on increasing in
importance till they went away together hand in hand, and up into the
astronomical tower.

Full of alarm and anxiety, Fraeulein Aennchen now made haste to her
kitchen garden, with the view of trying to save whatever it might still
be possible to save. The maid-servant was there already, standing
staring before her with open mouth, motionless as a person turned like
Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. Aennchen at once fell into the same
condition beside her. At last they both cried out, making the welkin
ring, "Oh, Herr Gemini! What a terrible sort of thing!" For the whole
beautiful vegetable garden was turned into a wilderness. Not the trace
of a plant in it, it looked like a devastated country.

"No," cried the maid, "there's no other way of accounting for it, these
cursed little creatures have done it. Coming here in their coaches,
forsooth! coaches, quotha! as if they were people of quality! Ha! ha! A
lot of kobolds, that's what _they_