CHAPTER I

IN LEUK

THE JUNESUN was streaming down upon the green slope above the village of Leuk, and the fresh green grass which covered the heights as far as the eye could see filled the air with fragrance. At an isolated house along the path which led to the baths of Leuk, two women were lost in lively talk; indeed it seemed as if they could never come to the end of everything they had to say to each other.

“Yes, Marianna,” said the more talkative of the two, “if you could furnish a couple of rooms the way I did, you would soon realize a good profit. You could soon get boarders among the people who have relatives at the baths. You know some of them do not want to go there, or are not allowed to, just like the three who are staying with me. You really are a little too far down, for people like to go a little higher up in the summer. If only you were living where those people over there do. They certainly have the best spot on the slope and own all the very best meadows. But I do not think much of them,” the woman concluded with an unfriendly glance toward the house which stood a little higher up and away from the road. “They are nearly eaten up with pride, especially she, and you ought to see her.”

“In what way do they show it?” Marianna asked.

“In what way? You might just as well ask in what way they don’t show it,” Magdalene replied quickly. “They show it in everything. In everything they do and in the way they dress as if it were always Sunday with them. She has brought up the children to be just as particular as she is. The boy’s black hair is always curled as if he were going to the church fair and the little one always carries her nose high in the air as if she meant to say, ‘Watch out, here I come!’”

“How can the little one help it if her nose has grown that way?” was Mar