s own hands,
and they both lingered over it as if loth to let us go. Evidently the
coachman had told them what I was going to do, and I suppose such an
enterprising woman does not get out at Miltzow every day. They packed us
in with the greatest care, with so much care that I thought they would
never have done. My hold-all was the biggest piece of luggage, and they
corded it on in an upright position at our feet. I had left the choosing
of its contents to Gertrud, only exhorting her, besides my pillow, to
take a sufficiency of soap and dressing-gowns. Gertrud's luggage was
placed by the porter on her lap. It was almost too modest. It was one
small black bag, and a great part of its inside must, I knew, be taken
up by the stockings she had brought to knit and the needles she did it
with; yet she looked quite as respectable the day we came home as she
did the day we started, and every bit as clean. My dressing-case was put
on the box, and on top of it was a brown cardboard hat-box containing
the coachman's wet-weather hat. A thick coat for possible cold days made
a cushion for my back, and Gertrud's waterproof did the same thing for
hers. Wedged in between us was the tea-basket, rattling inharmoniously,
but preventing our slipping together in sloping places. Behind us in the
hood were the umbrellas, rugs, guide-books, and maps, besides one of
those round shiny yellow wooden band-boxes into which every decent
German woman puts her best hat. This luggage, and some mysterious
bundles on the box that the coachman thought were hidden by his legs but
which bulged out unhideable on either side, prevented our looking
elegant; but I did not want to look elegant, and I had gathered from the
remarks of those who had refused to walk that Ruegen was not a place
where I should meet any one who did.

Now I suppose I could talk for a week and yet give no idea whatever of
the exultation that filled my soul as I gazed on these arrangements. The
picnic-like simplicity of them was so full of promise. It was as though
I were going back to the very morning of life, to those fresh years when
shepherd boys and others shout round one for no reason except that they
are out of doors and alive. Also, during the years that have come after,
years that may properly be called riper, it has been a conviction of
mine that there is nothing so absolutely bracing for the soul as the
frequent turning of one's back on duties. This was exactly what I was
doing;