things. They came upon an old woman by
the road-side, and it gave Amrei a thrill of satisfaction she never
before had felt to be able to throw out a pair of shoes to her. John
commended this charitable instinct in her, and then began to tell her
all about his home.]

Was it by a tacit agreement, or was it due to the influence which the
present time exerted upon them, that they spoke not a word of how their
arrival at John's house was to be arranged until toward noon, when they
reached the outskirts of Zumarshofen? Only when they began to meet
people who knew John, and who saluted him with glances of wonder at his
companion, did he declare to Amrei that he had thought of two ways in
which the thing might best be done. Either he would take Amrei to his
sister, who lived a short distance further on--one could see the steeple
of her village peering up from behind a hill--and then go home alone and
explain everything, or else he would take Amrei home at once--that is,
she should get down half a mile before they got there, and enter the
house alone in the character of a maid.

Amrei showed great cleverness in explaining what should guide them in
this matter, and what might come of their adopting either of the two
methods of procedure proposed by John. If she stopped at his sister's,
she would first have to win over to her side a person who would not be
the one with whom the final decision lay, and it might result in all
kinds of complications, the end of which could not be foreseen. And
moreover, it would always be an unpleasant reflection, and there would
be all sorts of remarks made about it--as if she had not dared to go
straight to the house. The second plan seemed to her the better one; but
it went against her very soul to enter the house by means of a
deception. His mother, to be sure, had promised years ago to take her
into her service; but she did not want to go into her service now, and
it would be almost like stealing to try to worm herself into favor with
the old people in that way. And furthermore in such a disguise she would
be sure to do everything clumsily; she would not be able to be natural
and straightforward, and if she had to place a chair for his father, she
would be sure to overturn it, for she would always be thinking: "You are
doing this to deceive him." Moreover, even supposing all this could be
done, how could she afterward appear before the servants, when they
learned that their mistress had been