"But is it not conceivable," I asked, "that a young woman may sometimes wish to please herself even at the expense of her appearance. Miss Smith assures me that she enjoys long walks and games,--oh, games that you have not seen her play here--hockey, for instance, and cricket." "_Verrückt!_" said the men in chorus. "A young woman should not think of herself at all. The Almighty has created her to please us, and it does not please us when she wears muddy boots and is as red as a poppy; at least, not while she is young. When she is married, and her place is in the kitchen, she may be as red as she pleases. That is a different matter." "Is it?" I said, and I wanted to ask why again; but I held my tongue. Some questions, as they said, lead one too far afield. The majority of visitors at a German watering-place take very little exercise of any kind. They sit about the forest as our seaside visitors sit about the sands, and though they cannot fill in their mornings by sea bathing, there are often medicinal baths that take as much time. Then the _Badearzt_ probably prescribes so many glasses of water from his favourite spring each day, and a short walk after each glass, and a long rest after the midday dinner. Dinner is the really serious business of the day, and often occupies two hours. Where there is still a _table d'hôte_ it is a tedious, noisy affair, conducted in a stuffy room, and even if you are greedy enough to like the good things brought round you wish very soon that you were on a Cumberland fell-side with a mutton sandwich and a mountain stream. You wish it even although you hate mutton sandwiches and like meringues filled with Alpine strawberries and whipped cream; for the clatter and the clack going on around you, and the asphyxiating air, bring on a demoralising somnolence that you despise and cannot easily throw off. You sit about as lazily as anyone else half through the golden afternoon, drink a cup of coffee at four o'clock, look at mountains of cake, and then start for the restaurant, which is said to be _eine gute Stunde_ from the hotel. You find, as you expected, that you saunter gently uphill on a broad winding road through the forest, and that you have a charming walk, but not what anyone in this country would call exercise till they were about seventy. In case you should be weary you pass seats every hundred yards or so, and when you have made your ascent you are received by a bustling waiter or a waitress in costume, who expects to serve you with beer or coffee before you venture down the hill again. By the time you get back to the hotel everyone is streaming in to supper, which is not as long as dinner, but quite as noisy. After supper everyone sits about the verandah or the garden. The men play cards, and smoke and drink coffee and Kirsch, the married women talk and do embroidery, the maidens stroll about in twos and threes or sit down to Halma. There are never many young men