d not molest them, and ladies walked about
freely in the lovely neighbourhood, so that Honor had no scruple in
sending out her charges, unaccompanied except by Lieschen, in case the
two others might wish to dispose of Maria, while they engaged in some
pursuit beyond her powers.

Poor Lieschen, a plump Prussian, grown portly on Beauchamp good living,
had little sympathy with the mountain tastes of her frauleins, and would
have wished all Hyeres like the shelf on the side of the hill where stood
their hotel, whence the party set forth for the Place des Palmiers, so
called from six actual palms bearing, but not often ripening, dates. Two
sides were enclosed by houses, on a third an orange garden sloped down
the descent; the fourth, where the old town climbed straight up the hill,
was regarded by poor Lieschen with dread, and she vainly persuaded Maria
at least to content herself with joining the collection of natives
resting on the benches beneath the palms. How willingly would the good
German have produced her knitting, and sought a compatriot among the
nurses who sat gossiping and embroidering, while Maria might have played
among their charges, who were shovelling about, or pelting each other
with the tiny white sea-washed pebbles that thickly strewed the place.

But Maria, with the little Maltese dog in her arms, to guard him from a
hailstorm of the pebbles, was inexorably bent on following her sisters;
and Bertha had hurried nervously across from the strangers, so that
Lieschen must pursue those light steps through the winding staircase
streets, sometimes consisting of broad shallow steps, sometimes of actual
flights of steep stairs hewn out in the rock, leading to a length of
level terrace, where, through garden gates, orange trees looked out,
dividing the vantage ground with houses and rocks--up farther, past the
almost desolate old church of St. Paul--farther again--till, beyond all
the houses, they came forth on the open mountainside, with a crest of
rock far above, surmounted by the ruins of a castle, said to have been
fortified by the Saracens, and taken from them by Charles Martel. It was
to this castle that Phoebe's sketching duty was to be paid, and Maria and
Bertha expressed their determination of climbing up to it, in hopes, as
the latter said, of finding Charles Martel's original hammer. Lieschen,
puffing and panting already, looked horrified, and laughingly they bade
her sit down and knit, whilst they