They overtook the others drawn up in the roadway before a long low wooden house. Miriam had time to see little gilded figures standing out in niches in rows all along the façade and rows of scrollwork dimly painted, as she stood still a moment with beating heart behind the group. She heard Fräulein talking in English of councillors and centuries and assumed for a moment as Fräulein's eye passed her a look of intelligence; then they had all moved on together deeper into the town. She clung to Minna, talking at random ... did she like Hoddenheim ... and Minna responded to the full, helping her, talking earnestly and emphatically about food and the sunshine, isolating the two of them; and they all reached the cobbled open space and stood still and the peaked houses stood all round them. 15 "You like old-time Germany, Miss Henderson?" Miriam turned a radiant face to Fräulein Pfaff's table and made some movement with her lips. "I think you have something of the German in you." "She has, she has," said Minna from the little arbour where she sat with Millie. "She is not English." They had eaten their lunch at a little group of arboured tables at the back of an old wooden inn. Fräulein had talked history to those nearest to her and sat back at last with her gauze veil in place, tall and still in her arbour, sighing happily now and again and making her little sounds of affectionate raillery as the girls finished their coffee and jested and giggled together across their worm-eaten, green-painted tables. "You have beautiful old towns and villages in England," said Fräulein, yawning slightly. "Yes--but not anything like this." "Oh, Gertrude, that isn't true. We _have_." "Then they're hidden from view, my dear Mill, not visible to the naked eye," laughed Gertrude. "Tell us, my Millie," encouraged Fräulein, "say what you have in mind. Perhaps Gairtrud does not know the English towns and villages as well as you do." The German girls attended eagerly. "I can't tell you the names of the places," said Millie, "but I have seen pictures." There was a pause. Gertrude smiled, but made no further response. "Peectures," murmured Minna. "Peectures always are beautiful. All towns are beautiful, perhaps. Not?" "There may be bits, perhaps," blurted Miriam, "but not whole towns and nothing anywhere a bit like Hoddenheim, I'm perfectly certain." "Oh, well, not the _same_," complained Millie, "but just as beautiful--more beautiful." "Oh-ho, Millississimo." "Of course there are, Bertha, there must be." "Well, Millicent," pressed Fräulein, "'more beautiful' and why? Beauty is what you see and is not for everyone the same. It is an _affaire de goût_. So you must tell us why to you the old towns of England are more beautiful than the old towns of Germany. It is because you prefair them? They are your towns, it is quite natural you should prefair them." "It isn't only that, Fräulein." "Well?"