"For facts are stubborn things."--SMOLLETT.
"Silberbach! What in the name of everything that is eccentric should
you go there for? The most uninteresting, out-of-the-way, altogether
unattractive little hole in all Germany? What can have put Silberbach in
your head?"
"I really don't know," I answered, rather tired, to tell the truth, of
the discussion. "There doesn't seem any particular reason why anybody
ever should go to Silberbach, except that Goethe and the Duke of Weimar
are supposed to have gone there to dance with the peasant maidens. I
certainly don't see that that is any reason why _I_ should go there.
Still, on the other hand, I don't see that it is any reason why I should
_not_? I only want to find some thoroughly country place where the
children and I can do as we like for a fortnight or so. It is really
too hot to stay in a town, even a little town like this."
"Yes, that is true," said my friend. "It is a pity you took up your
quarters in the town. You might have taken a little villa outside, and
then you would not have needed to go away at all."
"I wanted a rest from housekeeping, and our queer old inn is very
comfortable," I said. "Besides, being here, would it not be a pity to
go away without seeing anything of the far-famed Thuringian Forest?"
"Yes, certainly it would. I quite agree with you about everything except
about Silberbach. _That_ is what I cannot get over. You have not enough
self-assertion, my dear. I am certain Silberbach is some freak of Herr
von Walden's--most unpractical man. Why, I really am not at all sure
that you will get anything to eat there."
"I am not afraid of _that_ part of it," I replied philosophically. "With
plenty of milk, fresh eggs, and bread and butter, we can always get on.
And those I suppose we are sure to find."
"Milk and eggs--yes, I suppose so. Butter is doubtful once you leave the
tourist track, and the bread will be the sour bread of the country."
"I don't mind that--nor do the children. But if the worst comes to the
worst we need not stay at Silberbach--we can always get away."
"That is certainly true; if one can get there, one can, I suppose,
always get away," answered Fraeulein Ottilia with a smile, "though I
confess it is a curious inducement to name for going _to_ a place--that
one can get away from it! However, we need not say any more about it. I
see your heart is set on Silberbach, and I am quite sure I shall have
the satisfaction of hearing you own I was right in trying to dissuade
you from it, when you come back again," she added, rather maliciously.
"Perhaps so. But it is not _only_ Silberbach we are going to. We shall
see lots of other places. Herr von Walden has planned it all. The first
three days we shall travel mostly on foot. I think it will be great fun.
Nora and Reggie are enchanted. Of course I would not travel on foot
alone with them; it would hardly be safe, I suppose?"
"Safe? oh yes, safe enough. The peasants are very quiet, civil
people--honest and kindly, though generally desperately poor! But you
would be _safe_ enough anywhere in Thuringia. It is not like Alsace,
where now and then one does meet with rather queer customers in the
forests. So good-bye, then, my dear, for the next two or three
weeks--and may you enjoy yourself."
"Especially at Silberbach?"
"_Even_ at Silberbach--that is to say, even if I have to own you were
right and I wrong. Yes, my dear, I am unselfish enough to hope you will
return having found Silberbach an earthly paradise."
And waving her hand in adieu, kind Fraeulein Ottilia stood at her
garden-gate watching me make my way down the dusty road.
"She is a little prejudiced, I daresay," I thought to myself.
"Prejudiced against Herr von Walden's choice, for I notice every one
here has their pet places and their special aversions. I daresay we
shall like Silberbach, and if not, we need not stay there after the
Waldens leave us. Anyway, I shall be thankful to get out of this heat
into the real country."
I was spending the summer in a part of Germany hitherto new ground to
me. We had--the "we" meaning myself and my two younger children, Nora of
twelve and Reggie of nine--settled down for the greater part of the time
in a small town on the borders of the Thuringian Forest. Small, but
not in its own estimation unimportant, for it was a "Residenz," with a
fortress of sufficiently ancient date to be well worth visiting, even
had the view from its ramparts been far less beautiful than it was. And
had the little town possessed no attractions of its own, natural or
artificial, the extreme cordiality and kindness of its most hospitable
inhabitants would have left the pleasantest impression on my mind. I was
sorry to leave my friends even for two or three weeks, but it was _too_
hot! Nora was pale and Reggie's noble appetite gave signs of flagging.
Besides--as I had said to Ottilia--it would be too absurd to have come
so far and not see the lions of the neighbourhood.
So we were to start the next morning for an excursion in the so-called
"Forest," in the company of Herr von Walden, his wife and son, and two
young men, friends of the latter. We were to travel by rail over the
first part of the ground, uninteresting enough, till we reached a point
where we could make our way on foot through the woods for a considerable
distance. Then, after spending the night in a village whose beautiful
situation had tempted some enterprising speculator to build a good
hotel, we proposed the next day to plunge still deeper into the real
recesses of the forest, walking and driving by turns, in accordance
with our inclination and the resources of the country in respect of
_Einspaenners_--the light carriage with the horse invariably yoked at one
side of the pole instead of between shafts, in which one gets about more
speedily and safely than might be imagined. And at the end of three or
four days of this, weather permitting, agreeably nomad life, our friends
the Waldens, obliged to return to their home in the town from which we
started, were to leave my children and me for a fortnight's country air
in this same village of Silberbach which Ottilia so vehemently objected
to. I did not then, I do not now, know--and I am pretty sure he himself
could not say--why our guide, Herr von Walden, had chosen Silberbach
from among the dozens of other villages which could quite as well--as
events proved, indeed, infinitely better--have served our very simple
purpose. It was a chance, as such things often are, but a chance which,
as you will see, left its mark in a manner which can never be altogether
effaced from my memory.
The programme was successfully carried out. The weather was magnificent.
Nobody fell ill or footsore, or turned out unexpectedly bad-tempered.
And it was hot enough, even in the forest shades, which we kept to as
much as possible, to have excused some amount of irritability. But we
were all sound and strong, and had entered into a tacit compact of
making the best of things and enjoying ourselves as much as we could.
Nora and Reggie perhaps, by the end of the second day, began to have
doubts as to the delights of indefinitely continued walking excursions;
and though they would not have owned to it, they were not, I think,
sorry to hear that the greater part of the fourth day's travels was to
be on wheels. But they were very well off. Lutz von Walden and his
two friends--a young baron, rather the typical "German student" in
appearance, though in reality as hearty and unsentimental as any John
Bull of his age and rank--and George Norman, an English boy of seventeen
or eighteen, "getting up" German for an army examination--were all three
only too ready to carry my little boy on their backs on any sign of
over-fatigue. And, indeed, more than one hint reached me that they would
willingly have done the same by Nora, had the dignity of her twelve
years allowed of such a thing. She scarcely looked her age at that time,
but she was very conscious of having entered "on her teens," and the
struggle between this new importance and her hitherto almost boyish
tastes was amusing to watch. She was strong and healthy in the extreme,
intelligent though not precocious, observant but rather matter-of-fact,
with no undue development of the imagination, nothing that by any kind
of misapprehension or exaggeration could have been called "morbid" about
her. It was a legend in the family that the word "nerves" existed not
for Nora: she did not know the meaning of _fear_, physical or moral. I
could sometimes wish she had never learnt otherwise. But we must take
the bad with the good, the shadow inseparable from the light. The first
perception of things not dreamt of in her simple childish philosophy
came to Nora as I would not have chosen it; but so, I must believe, it
had to be.
"Where are we to sleep to-night, Herr von Walden, please?" asked Reggie
from the heights of Lutz's broad shoulders, late that third afternoon,
when we were all, not the children only, beginning to think that a rest
even in the barest of inn parlours, and a dinner even of the most
modest description, would be very welcome.
"Don't tease so, Reggie," said Nora. "I'm sure Herr von Walden has told
you the name twenty times already."
"Yes, but I forget it," urged the child; and good-natured Herr von
Walden, nowise loath to do so again, took up the tale of our projected
doings and destinations.
"To-night, my dear child, we sleep at the pretty little town--yes,
town I may almost call it--of Seeberg. It stands in what I may call an
oasis of the forest, which stops abruptly, and begins again some miles
beyond Seeberg. We should be there in another hour or so," he went on,
consulting his watch. "I have, of course, written for rooms there, as I
have done to all the places where we mean to halt. And so far I have
not proved a bad courier, I flatter myself?"
He paused, and looked round him complacently.
"No, indeed," replied everybody. "The very contrary. We have got on
capitally."
At which the beaming face of our commander-in-chief beamed still more
graciously.
"And to-morrow," continued Reggie in his funny German, pounding away
vigorously at Lutz's shoulders meanwhile, "what do we do to-morrow? We
must have an _Einspaenner_--is it not so? not that we are tired, but you
said we had far to go."
"Yes, an _Einspaenner_ for the ladies--your amiable mother, Miss Nora,
and my wife, and you, Reggie, will find a corner beside the driver.
Myself and these young fellows," indicating the three friends by a wave
of the hand, "will start from Seeberg betimes, giving you _rendez vous_
at Ulrichsthal, where there are some famous ruins. And you must not
forget," he added, turning to his wife and me, "to stop at Gruenstein
as you pass, and spend a quarter of an hour in the china manufactory
there."
"Just what I wanted," said Frau von Walden. "I have a tea-service from
there, and I am in hopes of matching it. I had a good many breakages
last winter with a dreadfully careless servant, and there is a good deal
to replace."
"I don't think I know the Gruenstein china," I said. "Is it very pretty?"
"It is very like the blue-and-white that one sees so much of with us,"
said Frau von Walden. "That, the ordinary blue-and-white, is made at
Blauenstein. But there is more variety of colours at Gruenstein. They are
rather more enterprising there, I fancy, and perhaps there is a finer
quality of china clay, or whatever they call it, in that neighbourhood.
I often wonder the Thuringian china is not more used in England, where
you are so fond of novelties."
"And where nothing is so appreciated as what comes from a distance,"
said George Norman. "By Jove! isn't that a pretty picture!" he broke off
suddenly, and we all stood still to admire.
It was the month of August; already the subdued evening lights were
replacing the brilliant sunshine and blue sky of the glowing summer day.
We were in the forest, through which at this part ran the main road
which we were following to Seeberg. At one side of the road the ground
descended abruptly to a considerable depth, and there in the defile far
beneath us ran a stream, on one bank of which the trees had been for
some distance cleared away, leaving a strip of pasture of the most
vivid green imaginable. And just below where we stood, a goatherd, in
what--thanks possibly to the enchantment of the distance--appeared a
picturesque costume, was slowly making his way along, piping as he went,
and his flock, of some fifteen or twenty goats of every colour and size,
following him according to their own eccentric fashion, some scrambling
on the bits of rock a little way up the ascending ground, others quietly
browsing here and there on their way--the tinkling of their collar-bells
reaching us with a far-away, silvery sound through the still softer and
fainter notes of the pipe. There was something strangely fascinating
about it all--something pathetic in the goatherd's music, simple,
barbaric even as it was, and in the distant, uncertain tinkling, which
impressed us all, and for a moment or two no one spoke.
"What is it that it reminds me of?" said Lutz suddenly. "I seem to have
seen and heard it all before."
"Yes, I know exactly how you mean," I replied. "It is like a dream;" and
as I said so, I walked on again a little in advance of the others with
Lutz and his rider. For I _thought_ I saw a philosophical or metaphysical
dissertation preparing in Herr von Walden's bent brows and general look
of absorption, and somehow, just then, it would have spoilt it all. Lutz
seemed instinctively to understand, for he too for a moment or so was
silent, when suddenly a joyful cry arose.
"Seeberg!" exclaimed several voices; for the first sight of our
temporary destination broke upon the view all at once, as is often
the case in these more or less wooded districts. One travels for hours
together as if in an enchanted land of changeless monotony; trees, trees
everywhere and nothing but trees--one could fancy late in the afternoon
that one was back at the early morning's starting-point--when suddenly
the forest stops, sharply and completely, where the hand of man has
decreed that it should, not by gradual degrees as when things have been
left to the gentler management of nature and time.
So our satisfaction was the greater from not having known the goal of
that day's journey to be so near. We began to allow to each other for
the first time that we were "a _little_ tired," and with far less
hesitation that we were "_very_ hungry." Still we were not a very
dilapidated-looking party when the inhabitants of Seeberg turned
out at doors and windows to inspect us. Reggie, of course, whom no
consideration could induce to make his entry on Lutz's shoulders,
looking the freshest of all, and eliciting many complimentary remarks
from the matrons and maidens of the place as we passed.
Our quarters at Seeberg met with the approval of everybody. The supper
was excellent, our rooms as clean and comfortable as could be wished.
"So far," I could not help saying to my friends, "I have seen no signs
of the 'roughing it' for which you prepared me. I call this luxurious."
"Yes, this is very comfortable," said Herr von Walden. "At Silberbach,
which we shall reach to-morrow evening, all will be much more homely."
"But that is what I like," I maintained stoutly. "I assure you I am not
at all _difficile_, as the French say."
"Still," began Frau von Walden, "are you sure that you know what
'roughing it' means? One has such romantic, unpractical ideas till one
really tries it. For me, I confess, there is something very depressing
in being without all the hundred and one little comforts, not to say
luxuries, that have become second nature to us, and yet I do not think I
am a self-indulgent woman."
"Certainly not," I said, and with sincerity.
"If it were necessary," she went on, "I hope I should be quite ready to
live in a cottage and make the best of it cheerfully. But when it is not
necessary? Don't you think, my dear friend, it would perhaps be wiser
for you to arrange to spend your two or three weeks _here_, and not go
on to Silberbach? You might return here to-morrow from Ulrichsthal while
we make our way home, by Silberbach, if my husband really wishes to see
it."
I looked at her in some surprise. What possessed everybody to caution me
so against Silberbach? Everybody, that is to say, except Herr von Walden
himself. A spice of contradiction began to influence me. Perhaps the
worthy Herr had himself been influenced in the same way more than he
realised.
"I don't see why I should do so," I said. "We expect really to enjoy
ourselves at Silberbach. You have no reason for advising me to give it
up?"
"No, oh no--none in particular," she replied. "I have only a feeling
that it is rather out of the way and lonely for you. Supposing, for
instance, one of the children got ill there?"
"Oh, my dear, you are _too_ fanciful," said her husband. "Why should the
children get ill there more than anywhere else? If one thought of all
these possibilities one would never stir from home."
"And you know my maid is ready to follow me as soon as I quite settle
where we shall stay," I said. "I shall not be alone more than
four-and-twenty hours. Of course it would have been nonsense to bring
Lina with us; she would have been quite out of her element during our
walking expeditions."
"And I have a very civil note from the inn at Silberbach, the 'Katze,'"
said Herr von Walden, pulling a mass of heterogeneous-looking papers
out of his pocket. "Where can it be? Not that it matters; he will have
supper and beds ready for us to-morrow night. And then," he went on to
me, "if you like it you can make some arrangement for the time you wish
to stay, if not you can return here, or go on to any place that takes
your fancy. We, my wife and I and these boys, _must_ be home by Saturday
afternoon, so we can only stay the one night at Silberbach," for this
was Thursday.
And so it was settled.
The next day dawned as bright and cloudless as its predecessors. The
gentlemen had started--I should be afraid to say how early--meaning to
be overtaken by us at Ulrichsthal. Reggie had gone to bed with the firm
intention of accompanying them, but as it was not easy to wake him
and get him up in time to eat his breakfast, and be ready when the
_Einspaenner_ came round to the door, my predictions that he would be
too sleepy for so early a start proved true.
It was pleasant in the early morning--pleasanter than it would be later
in the day. I noticed an unusual amount of blue haze on the distant
mountain-tops, for the road along which we were driving was open on all
sides for some distance, and the view was extensive.
"That betokens great heat, I suppose," I said, pointing out the
appearance I observed to my companion.
"I suppose so. That bluish mist probably increases in hot and sultry
weather," she said. "But it is always to be seen more or less in this
country, and is, I believe, peculiar to some of the German hill and
forest districts. I don't know what it comes from--whether it has to do
with the immense number of pines in the forests, perhaps. Some one, I
think, once told me that it indicates the presence of a great deal of
electricity in the air, but I am far too ignorant to know if that is
true or not."
"And I am far too ignorant to know what the effect would be if it were
so," I said. "It is a very healthy country, is it not?"
"For strangers it certainly is. Doctors send their patients here from
all parts of Germany. But the inhabitants themselves do not seem strong
or healthy. One sees a good many deformed people, and they all look pale
and thin--much less robust than the people of the Black Forest. But
that may come from their poverty--the peasants of the Black Forest are
proverbially well off."
A distant, very distant, peal of thunder was heard at this moment.
"I hope the weather is not going to break up _just_ yet," I said. "Are
there often bad thunderstorms here?"
"Yes; I think we do have a good many in this part of the world," she
replied. "But I do not think there are any signs of one at present."
And then, still a little sleepy and tired from our unusual exertions of
the last three days, we all three, Frau von Walden, Nora, and myself,
sat very still for some time, though the sound of Reggie's voice
persistently endeavouring to make the driver understand his inquiries,
showed that he was as lively as ever.
He turned round after a while in triumph.
"Mamma, Frau von Walden," he exclaimed, "we are close to that place
where they make the cups and saucers. Herr von Walden said we weren't to
forget to go there--and you all _would_ have forgotten, you see, if it
hadn't been for me," he added complacently.
"Gruenstein," said Frau von Walden. "Well, tell the driver to stop
there, he can rest his horses for half an hour or so; and thank you
for reminding us, Reggie, for I should have been sorry to lose the
opportunity of matching my service."
The china manufactory was not of any very remarkable interest, at least
not for those who had visited such places before. But the people were
exceedingly civil, and evidently very pleased to have visitors; and
while my friend was looking out the things she was specially in search
of--a business which promised to take some little time--a good-natured
sub-manager, or functionary of some kind, proposed to take the children
to see the sheds where the first mixing and kneading took place, the
moulding rooms, the painting rooms, the ovens--in short, the whole
process. They accepted his offer with delight, and I wandered about the
various pattern or show rooms, examining and admiring all that was to be
seen, poking into corners where any specially pretty bit of china caught
my eye. But there was no great variety in design or colour, though
both were good of their kind, the Gruensteiners, like their rivals of
Blauenstein, seeming content to follow in the steps of their fathers
without seeking for new inspirations. Suddenly, however, all but hidden
in a corner, far away back on a shelf, a flash of richer tints made me
start forward eagerly. There was no one near to apply to at the moment,
so I carefully drew out my treasure trove. It was a cup and saucer,
evidently of the finest quality of china, though pretty similar in shape
to the regular Gruenstein ware, but in colouring infinitely richer--really
beautiful, with an almost Oriental cleverness in the blending of the
many shades, and yet decidedly more striking and uncommon than any of
the modern Oriental with which of late years the facilities of trade
with the East make us so familiar. I stood with the cup in my hand,
turning it around and admiring it, when Frau von Walden and the woman
who had been attending to her orders came forward to where I was.
"See here," I exclaimed; "here is a lovely cup! Now a service like that
_would_ be tempting! Have you more of it?" I inquired of the woman.
She shook her head.
"That is all that remains," she said. "We have never kept it in stock;
it is far too expensive. Of course it can be made to order, though it
would take some months, and cost a good deal."
"I wish I could order a service of it," I said; but when I heard how
much it would probably cost it was my turn to shake my head. "No, I must
consider about it," I decided; "but I really have never seen anything
prettier. Can I buy this cup?"
The woman hesitated.
"It is the only one left," she said; "but I think--oh yes, I feel
sure--we have the pattern among the painting designs. This cup belonged
to, or rather was an extra one of, a tea-service made expressly for
the Duchess of T----, on her marriage, now some years ago. And it is
curious, we sold the other one--there were two too many--to a compatriot
of yours (the gracious lady is English?) two or three years ago. He
admired them so much, and felt sure his mother would send an order if he
took it home to show her. A tall, handsome young man he was. I remember
it so well; just about this time of the year, and hot, sultry weather
like this. He was travelling on foot--for pleasure, no doubt--for he had
quite the air of a _milord_. And he bought the cup, and took it with
him. But he has never written! I made sure he would have done so."
"He did not leave his name or address?" I said; for the world is a
small place: it was just possible I might have known him, and the
little coincidence would have been curious.
"Oh no," said the woman. "But I have often wondered why he changed his
mind. He seemed so sure about sending the order. It was not the price
that made him hesitate; but he wished his lady mother to make out the
list herself."
"Well, I confess the price _does_ make _me_ hesitate," I said, smiling.
"However, if you will let me buy this cup, I have great hopes of proving
a better customer than my faithless compatriot."
"I am sure he _meant_ to send the order," said the woman. She spoke
quite civilly, but I was not sure that she liked my calling him
"faithless."
"It is evident," I said to Frau von Walden, "that the good-looking
young Englishman made a great impression on her. I rather think she
gave _him_ the fellow cup for nothing."
But after all I had no reason to be jealous, for just then the woman
returned, after consulting the manager, to tell me I might have the cup
and saucer, and for a less sum than their real worth, seeing that I was
taking it, in a sense, as a pattern.
Then she wrapped it up for me, carefully and in several papers, of which
the outside one was bright blue; and, very proud of my acquisition, I
followed Frau von Walden to the other side of the building containing
the workrooms, where we found the two children full of interest about
all they had seen.
I should here, perhaps, apologise for entering into so much and
apparently trifling detail. But as will, I think, be seen when I have
told all I have to tell, it would be difficult to give the main facts
fairly, and so as to avoid all danger of any mistaken impression,
without relating the whole of the surroundings. If I tried to condense,
to pick out the salient points, to enter into no particulars but such
as directly and unmistakably lead up to the central interest, I might
unintentionally omit what those wiser than I would consider as bearing
on it. So, like a patient adjured by his doctor, or a client urged by
his lawyer, to tell the whole at the risk of long-windedness, I prefer
to run that risk, while claiming my readers' forgiveness for so doing,
rather than that of relating my story incompletely.
And what I would here beg to have specially observed is _that not one
word about the young Englishman had been heard by Nora_. She was, in
fact, in a distant part of the building at the time the saleswoman was
telling us about him. And, furthermore, I am equally certain, and so is
Frau von Walden, that neither she nor I, then or afterwards, mentioned
the subject to, or in the presence of, the children. I did not show her
the cup and saucer, as it would have been a pity to undo its careful
wrappings. All she knew about it will be told in due course.
We had delayed longer than we intended at the china manufactory, and in
consequence we were somewhat late at the meeting-place--Ulrichsthal. The
gentlemen had arrived there quite an hour before; so they had ordered
luncheon, or dinner rather, at the inn, and thoroughly explored
the ruins. But dinner discussed, and neither Frau von Walden nor I
objecting to pipes, our cavaliers were amiably willing to show us all
there was to be seen.
The ruins were those of an ancient monastery, one of the most ancient in
Germany, I believe. They covered a very large piece of ground, and had
they been in somewhat better preservation, they would have greatly
impressed us; as it was they were undoubtedly, even to the unlearned in
archaeological lore, very interesting. The position of the monastery had
been well and carefully chosen, for on one side it commanded a view of
surpassing beauty over the valley through which we had travelled from
Seeberg, while on the other arose still higher ground, richly wooded,
for the irrepressible forest here, as it were, broke out again.
"It is a most lovely spot!" I said with some enthusiasm, as we sat in
the shade of the ruined cloisters, the sunshine flecking the sward in
eccentric patches as it made its way through what had evidently been
richly-sculptured windows. "How one wishes it were possible to see it
as it must have been--how many?--three or four hundred years ago, I
suppose!"
Lutz grunted.
"What did you say, Lutz?" asked his mother.
"Nothing particular," he sighed. "I was only thinking of what I read in
the guide-book, that the monastery was destroyed--partly by lightning, I
believe, all the same--by order of the authorities, in consequence of
the really awful wickedness of the monks who inhabited it. So I am not
sure that it would have been a very nice place to visit at the time you
speak of, gracious lady, begging your pardon."
"What a pity!" I said, with a little shudder. "I do not like to think
of it. And I was going to say how beautiful it must be here in the
moonlight! But now that you have disenchanted me, Lutz, I should not
like it at all," and I arose as I spoke.
"Why not, mamma?" said Reggie curiously. I had not noticed that he and
his sister were listening to us. "They're not here _now_--not those
naughty monks."
"No, of course not," agreed practical Nora. "Mamma only means that it
is a pity such a beautiful big house as this must have been _had_ to
be pulled down--such a waste when there are so many poor people in the
world with miserable, little, stuffy houses, or none at all even! That
was what you meant; wasn't it, mamma?"
"It is always a pity--the worst of pities--when people are wicked,
wherever they are," I replied.
"But _all_ monks are not bad," remarked Nora consolingly. "Think of the
Great St. Bernard ones, with their dogs."
And on Reggie's inquiring mind demanding further particulars on the
subject, she walked on with him somewhat in front of the rest of us, a
happy little pair in the sunshine.
"Lutz," said his father, "you cannot be too careful what you say before
children; they are often shocked or frightened by so little. Though
yours are such healthy-minded little people," he added, turning to me,
"it is not likely anything undesirable would make any impression on
them."