As Madame Doppeldick said this, she thrust both her fat hands into the pockets of her scarlet cotton apron, at the same time giving her head a gentle shake, as if implying that it was a case in which heads and hands could be of no possible avail. She was standing in a little dormitory, exactly equidistant from two beds, between which her eyes and her thoughts had been alternating some ten minutes past. They were small beds,--pallets,--cots,--cribs, troughs upon four legs, such as the old painters represent the manger in their pictures of the Nativity. Our German beds are not intended to carry double, and in such an obscure out-of-the way village as Kleinewinkel, who would think of finding any thing better in the way of a couch than a sort of box just too little for a bed, and just too large for a coffin? It was between two such bedlings, then, that Madame Doppeldick was standing, when she broke out into the aforesaid exclamation--“I am perfectly at my wits’ ends!” Now, the wits’ ends of Madame Doppeldick scarcely extended farther from her scull than the horns of a snail. They seldom protruded far beyond her nose, and that was a short one; and moreover they were apt to recede and draw in from the first obstacle they encountered, leaving their proprietor to feel her own way, as if she had no wits’ ends at all. Thus, having satisfied themselves that there were only two beds in the rooms, they left the poor lady in the lurch, and absolutely at a nonplus, as to how she was to provide for the accommodation of a third sleeper, who was expected to arrive the same evening. There was only one best bed-room in the house, and it happened to be the worst bed-room also; all for Gretchen, the maid-servant, went home nightly to sleep at her mother’s. To be sure a shake-down might be spread in the parlour; but to be sure the parlour was also a shop of all sorts; and to be sure the young officer would object to such accommodations; and to be very sure, Mr. Doppeldick would object equally to the shake-down, and giving up the two beds overhead to his wife and the young officer. “God forgive me,” said the perplexed Madame Doppeldick as she went slowly down the stairs;--“but I wish Captain Schenk had been killed at the battle of Leipzig, or had got a bed of glory anywhere else, before he came to be billeted on us!” [Illustration: “I’LL TAKE A BED WITH YOU.”] CHAPTER II.