are, trust _me_ for that, Miss. And
if I had a drop of holy water here I'd soon show you what all those
fine things of theirs would turn to. But if they come here, the little
brutes, I'll bash the heads of them with this spade here." And she
flourished this threatening spade over her head, whilst Anna wept
aloud.

But at this point, four members of Cordovanspitz's suite came up with
such very pleasant ingratiating speeches and such courteous reverences,
being such wonderful creatures to behold, at the same time that the
maid, instead of attacking them with the spade, let it slowly sink, and
Fraeulein Aennchen ceased weeping.

They announced themselves as being the four friends who were the most
immediately attached to their lord's person, saying that they belonged
to four different nationalities (as their dress indicated,
symbolically, at all events), and that their names were, respectively,
Pan Kapustowicz, from Poland; Herr von Schwartzrettig, from Pomerania;
Signor di Broccoli, from Italy; and Monsieur de Rocambolle, from
France. They said, moreover, that the builders would come directly, and
afford the beautiful lady the gratification of seeing them erect a
lovely palace, all of silk, in the shortest possible space of time.

"What good will the silken palace be to me?" cried Fraeulein Aennchen,
weeping aloud in her bitter sorrow. "And what do I care about your
Baron Cordovanspitz, now that you have gone and destroyed my beautiful
vegetables, wretched creatures that you are. All my happy days are
over."

But the polite interlocutors comforted her, and assured her that they
had not by any means had the blame of desolating the kitchen-garden,
and that, moreover, it would very soon be growing green and flourishing
in such luxuriance as she had never seen, or anybody else in the world
for that matter.

The little building-people arrived, and then there began such a
confused-looking, higgledy-piggledy, and helter-skeltering on the plot
of ground that Fraeulein Anna and the maid ran away quite frightened,
and took shelter behind some thickets, whence they could see what would
be the end of it all.

But though they couldn't explain to themselves how things perfectly
canny _could_ come about as they did, there certainly arose and formed
itself before their eyes, and in a few minutes' time, a lofty and
magnificent marquee, made of a golden-yellow material and ornamented
with many-coloured garlands and plumes, occupyin