At this point my father, still friendly, would say, "Do be quiet, laddie." But scarcely had he spoken when again there came such a wonderful face that I simply couldn't help laughing outright. He peered into the little looking-glass, and I fully expected to see his distorted features relax into a smile. Then he suddenly called out, "If you're not quiet, boy, I'll break the shaving-brush over your pate!" It was now high time to creep under the table, where my smothered giggles kept me shaking like a wet poodle. After that he could shave peacefully and without danger of breaking out into untimely mirth over his own or my grimaces. And so it came to pass one winter evening that my father was sitting before the soap-bowl and I under the table when I heard someone in the entrance stamping the snow from his boots. A moment later the door opened and in came a big man whose thick red beard had icicles hanging from it just like our shingle roof outside. He at once sat down on a bench, drew a big tobacco-pipe from under his homespun cloak, gripped it between his front teeth, and, while striking a light, remarked, "Having a shave, Farmer?" "Yes, I'm having a bit of a shave," answered my father, and went on scraping with the razor, and cut a really God-forsaken grimace. "That's all right," said the stranger. And later, when he was quite hidden in tobacco smoke and the icicles were dripping from his beard, he uttered himself thus: "I don't know if so be you know me or not, Farmer. Five year agone I passed your place and took a drink of water at your spring. I come from Stanz; I'm Frau Drachenbinder's farm-hand, and I've come about the matter of that big lad of yours." Under the table, I went hot to the tips of my toes at these words. My father had but one big lad at the time, and that was myself. I drew back into the darkest corner. "Come about my boy?" returned my father. "You can have him if you want him--we can easily spare him; he's just too bad for anything!" (Peasant folk are very fond of talking like that for the sake of teasing and overaweing their forward children.) "Come, come, Farmer! Not so bad as all that! Frau Drachenbinder wants to get something written down--a will or some such matter--and she don't know anybody, far and wide, that's a good writing scholar. But now she's heard tell that the farmer at Vorderalpel has got an uncommon kind of boy that can do such things as that with his little finger alone! And so she's sent me off here, and I was to beg of you, Farmer, if you'd be so kind as to lend her the loan of the boy over there for a day. She'll soon pack him off back again, and give him something for his trouble as well." When I heard him say that I rattled my shoe-tips against the table legs: that wouldn't come at all amiss, I thought. "Go along with you!" said my father when he had scratched one cheek quite smooth. "However is my small boy to go to Stanz in the dead of winter? It must be at least a four hours' walk!"