VIII. SEPP'S COURTSHIP. "TO-DAY is our Statute Fair,” said an old peasant woman who had been laid up with the gout nigh upon five years, as she raised herself with difficulty and tied with trembling hands a handkerchief round her head. After taking it on and off many times, she succeeded in tying a bow in the middle of her forehead, which stood out like the wings of a windmill, and then she again repeated "To-day is our Statute Fair, Sepp; and you'll have to go alone to the dance this evening, as you did last year, and the year before, and always will, I verily believe! Didn't you promise me faithfully to take a wife this year! But I suppose it's no use! you won't marry in my day-no, nor after me neither. Ah! if your poor father had lived to see such a thing! Do you want to be for ever an old bachelor? Don't you know what all the girls sing? 666 'Clipper, clapper, bachelor old, Get to the forest and think of the cold; F Think of the winter, how soon 'twill be here, All you can muster your cottage to cheer. Wood that makes ashes, and wood that makes soot, Cut from the stock, or dug up by the root; Get you a plenty, but mark what you choose, And see you don't take what the beggars refuse.' The son timidly answered he really did not know which to choose, for all the girls in the village pleased him equally well. "Go into the village, then," said his mother, "and look about amongst the girls you think will suit you, and come back and tell me what you found them doing." And Sepp went accordingly. "Well," cried his mother when he returned, "how did it fare with you? Where have you been?" "I went first to Ursula; she had just come home from church, with such a fine dress on, and a pair of new earrings." The mother sighed, and said, "The nearer to church the farther from God! The miller doesn't hear the noise of his mill! Where, then, did you go?" "To Kate, mother." "And what was she about?" "Oh, she was in the kitchen, rattling about the pots and pans." "How did they look?" |