After sundry inquiries on each side, respecting the children and the guests, and the state of things in the world at large, the real question was asked, “Ah, meine liebe Frau Frohmann,--my very dear Mrs. Frohmann, as one might say here,--why are you dealing with us all in the Brunnenthal after this hard fashion?” “What do you call a hard fashion, Suse?” “Only giving half price for everything that you buy. Why should anything be cheaper this year than it was last? Ah, alas! does not everybody know that everything is dearer?” “Why should anything be dearer, Suse? The people who come here are not charged more than they were twenty years ago.” “Who can tell? How can an old woman say? It is all very bad. The world, I suppose, is getting worse. But it is so. Look at the taxes.” The taxes, whether imperial or municipal, was a matter on which Frau did not want to speak. She felt that they were altogether beyond her reach. No doubt there had been a very great increase in such demands during her time, and it was an increase against which nobody could make any stand at all. But, if that was all, there had been a rise in prices quite sufficient to answer that. She was willing to pay three zwansigers a pair for chickens, and yet she could remember when they were to be bought for a zwansiger each. “Yes, taxes,” she said; “they are an evil which we must all endure. It is no good grumbling at them. But we have had the roads made for us.” This was an unfortunate admission, for it immediately gave Suse Krapp an easy way to her great argument. “Roads, yes! and they are all saying that they must make use of them to send the things into market. Josephine Bull took her eggs into the city and got two kreutzers apiece for them.” The Frau had already heard of that journey, and had also heard that poor Josephine Bull had been very much fatigued by her labours. It had afflicted her much, both that the poor woman should have been driven to such a task, and that such an innovation should have been attempted. She had never loved Innsbruck dearly, and now she was beginning to hate the place. “What good did she get by that, Suse? None, I fear. She had better have given her eggs away in the valley.” “But they will have a cart.” “Do you think a cart won’t cost money? There must be somebody to drive the cart, I suppose.” On this point the Frau spoke feelingly, as she was beginning to appreciate the inconvenience of sending twice a week all the way to Brixen for her meat. There was a diligence, but though the horses were kept in her own stables, she had not as yet been able to come to terms with the proprietor. “There is all that to think of certainly,” said Suse. “But----. Wouldn’t you come back, meine liebe Frau, to the prices you were paying last year? Do you not know that they would sooner sell to you than to any other human being in all the world, and they must live by their little earnings?”