A few minutes later we find the two women, joined by Moidel, standing; against the cellar door, which is kept closely shut, that the smell emitted by a vat of sauerkraut may not offend the fastidious nostrils of the gentry.  Kathi has a sprig of rosemary behind her ear, and her bare arms wrapped up in her blue apron, always in her case a sign of ease and relaxation.  She is saying, “Ja, ja, very worrying.  Such side ways to get hold of the place!”

“And Munichers too!” adds Moidel—­“so pushing, so clamorous!”

The sight of some brown veils and gentlemen’s hats above the garden wall leads to the following explanation from Fanni:  “Herr Je, just when the Fraeulein was speaking of coming back next year, and I was thinking to myself how I would help the Kathi to scrub and clean beforehand, there were four strange Herrschaft below, who would insist on seeing the Hofbauer.  And he all in a Schwitz!  However, he came out of the stube very slowly, wiping his forehead, and waited to hear their errand.  But when they said they had come to secure part of the house from Martini day, and all the rooms not wanted by the Hofbauer from Ascension, he had to wipe his forehead again before he answered.  And then he spoke just like a Herr Curat:  ’This is no lodging-house, where any one can be quartered, my Herrschaft.  Nor believe that those who occupy my spare rooms are casual visitors.  Oh no!  They are particular friends of mine.  This old place stands at their disposal:  I wish them to be free to come or to stay away, but I desire no other faces here.’  And then,” continues Fanni, “out they slunk, quite sheepish, for the Hofbauer looked so tall.”

“Freilich” added Kathi, “it is not once nor twice, but ever since our Herrschaft have had an awning of their own on the balcony, and the miller’s mule has stood with a lady’s saddle at the entrance—­ever since the Hofbauer had the plasterer, and let the joiner make some wardrobes and bedsteads this spring, that barefaced strangers have hankered to get the place.”

We have to calm Kathi, bidding her remember that we once came as strangers and asked to be taken in.

Well, so the Herrschaft might.  There must be a beginning to all good friendships.  But it is not for people to thrust themselves in when they see the house inhabited, entering even the bed-rooms, and stripping the currant bushes without once saying, “With your leave.”  Why, the Grossmutterli had told her as a child that even the empress Maria Theresa—­who took a vast fancy to Edelsheim, and passed some nights there—­when she walked up the village by herself, and stopped before the Grossmutterli, who was ranging her milk-pans on the bench to dry,—­even the stately empress said, “My good woman, you live in an uncommonly handsome house—­a schloss, in fact.  But I won’t give you the trouble to show me the inside.  Let me rather go into the orchard, for I see a young apple tree there marvelously full of fruit.”  Grossmutterli never showed herself disturbed.  She pressed down the latch, led the empress to the tree—­it’s standing yet, but is almost worn out—­and Maria Theresa said it was a perfect show:  there was not a tree at her castle of Schoenbrunn that bore so well; and she gave the Grossmutterli a shining half thaler, which she never parted with.