“It seems to me that the house becomes fuller and fuller every year, Frau Frohmann.” “The house is full enough, sir; perhaps too full.” Then she hesitated as though she would say something further. But the words were wanting to her in which to explain her difficulties with sufficient clearness for the foreigner, and she retreated, therefore, back into her own domains. He, of course, had heard something of the Frau’s troubles, and had been willing enough to say a word to her about things in general if the occasion arose. But he had felt that the subject must be introduced by herself. She was too great a potentate to have advice thrust upon her uninvited. A few days after this she asked Malchen whether Schlessen was ever coming out to the Brunnenthal again. This was almost tantamount to an order for his presence. “He will come directly, mother, if you want to see him,” said Malchen. The Frau would do no more than grunt in answer to this. It was too much to expect that she should say positively that he must come. But Malchen understood her, and sent the necessary word to Innsbruck. On the following day Schlessen was at the Peacock, and took a walk up to the waterfall with Malchen before he saw the Frau. “She won’t ruin herself,” said Fritz. “It would take a great deal to ruin her. What she is losing in the house she is making up in the forests and in the land.” “Then it won’t matter if it does go on like this?” “It does matter because it makes her so fierce and unhappy, and because the more she is knocked about the more obstinate she will get. She has only to say the word, and all would be right to-morrow.” “What word?” asked Malchen. “Just to acknowledge that everything has got to be twenty-five per cent. dearer than it was twenty-five years ago.” “But she does not like paying more, Fritz. That’s just the thing.” “What does it matter what she pays?” “I should think it mattered a great deal.” “Not in the least. What does matter is whether she makes a profit out of the money she spends. Florins and zwansigers are but names. What you can manage to eat, and drink, and wear, and what sort of a house you can live in, and whether you can get other people to do for you what you don’t like to do yourself,--that is what you have got to look after.” “But, Fritz;--money is money.” “Just so; but it is no more than money. If she could find out suddenly that what she has been thinking was a zwansiger was in truth only half a zwansiger, then she would not mind paying two where she had hitherto paid one, and would charge two where she now charges one,--as a matter of course. That’s about the truth.” “But a zwansiger is a zwansiger.” “No;--not in her sense. A zwansiger now is not much more than half what it used to be. If the change had come all at once she could have understood it better.” “But why is it changed?”