Page - 97 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

indifferent to it, because mere talk is nothing to eat. They were louder and gayer at the servants’ table than we were over at the house-father’s table, because there was an old man amongst them who said the strangest things in the gravest manner at which they all laughed, until a maid said, “No, no; one must not laugh so at Kickel. It isn’t right that Kickel should be laughed at.” “Who’s laughing at him?” laughed a boy. “We’re only laughing because we please to.” I must have overheard that, as otherwise I should not have known it. I know also that suddenly the old Kickel jumped up from his place, and with his shirt-sleeve fluttering from his wide, strong arm, chucked a cherry-stone at the door opposite, which fell back again into the middle of the room. At that he cried “Bang!” and shouted with laughter. He did this several times, whereupon the others said, “It was quite right, and he must make a hole in the door so that one could look out into the kitchen to see whether or no stew was being cooked to-day.” Then Kickel raised his other arm, and “Bang!”—he threw the entire handful at the door, so that it rattled like a hail-storm. At the same moment the old man wrinkled up his wizened face and shouted out an angry curse. Then the house-father got up from our table, went to the infuriated old fellow and said soothingly, “Now, now, Kickel, don’t be so vexed. Sowing so many cherry-trees in the rooms! None of them will grow, you know. Be sensible, Kickel.” At my home the father would have talked very differently if such a person had strewn the room full of cherry-stones! Then the old servant stood before the house-father with folded hands, and in a voice of groaning anxiety he cried, “Zutrum, Zutrum, I don’t know how to help myself, it’s coming on again!” “Michel! Natzel!” said the house-father to the other two men, “take Kickel to bed. It is time for him to go to sleep.” Then they led Kickel away. Whatever did it mean? “It’s time for the children to go to sleep also,” added the house-father. “The Forest-farm boy must sleep in the top room.” The disappointment was bitter. I had thought that Simmerl and I would have been able to lie near each other on a pile of hay, and this was actually the reason that I had come with him into this strange house. Tears came into my eyes in proportion to the anguish of finding out that it was all up with the hay, and that I had to sleep by myself in a dark little room. The house-mother must have noticed something, for she said, “He can very well sleep in the little room with Simmerl; there’s a bed empty there.”