Sali and Vreni also stepped up to these booths, and they let their eyes travel over all these things. For both had instantly put their hands in their pockets and each wanted to present the other with a little gift, since that was the first and only time they had been together at a fair. Sali, therefore, bought a big house of gingerbread, the walls of which were calsomined with a mixture of butter and melted sugar, and on the green roof of which were perching snow-white pigeons, while from the chimney a small cupid was peeping forth clad as a chimney sweep. At the open windows of this wonderful house plump-cheeked persons with diminutive red mouths were embracing each other most affectionately, the kissing process being represented by the gingerbread artist by a sort of double mouth, or twins, one melting into the other. Black points meant eyes, and on the pinky-red housedoor there could be read the following touching stanzas: Enter my house, beloved, Yet do not thou forget That all the coin accepted Is kisses sweet, you bet. His sweetheart said: "Oh, dear one, This threat does not deter! My love for thee is greater Than any kind of fare. "And come to think it over, 'Twas kisses I did seek." Well, then, step in, my lady, And let thy lips now speak. A gentleman in a blue frock coat and a lady with an expansive bosom thus complimented each other by these rhymes into the house; both were painted to right and left of the wall. Vreni on her part presented Sali with a gingerbread heart, on which on either side these verses were pasted: A sweet, sweet almond pierces my heart, as you see, But sweeter far than almonds is my love for thee. When thou my heart hast eaten, Oh, let me not disguise That sooner than my love can break Will break my nutbrown eyes. Both of them eagerly read these verses, and never had rhymes, never had any kind of poetry, been more deeply felt and appreciated than were these gingerbread stanzas. They could not help fancying that they had been specially written for them, for they fitted so marvelously their requirements. "Ah, you give me a house," sighed Vreni. "But I have first made thee a gift of one myself, and of the real one. For our hearts are now our sole dwellings, and within them we live, and we carry our houses about with us wherever we may go, just like the snail. Other abode we have none left now." "But then we are snails really, of which each carries the house of the other," replied Sali. "Then we must never leave each other, for fear that we lose the other's house," answered Vreni.