Page - 99 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

himself, while it occurred to me, “We are not so strict at home.” Certainly, our mother said one ought to say one’s prayers, but she did not order one straight away on to the bench. Now I was to see too what came of the prayers. We had hardly raised our elbows from the table when it was spread with a white cloth, and set with white platters and with white bread, and a brown soup was poured out of the spout of a bright tin pot. At home it was just the other way round, everything else brown and the soup white. There was no milk-soup for breakfast here, but coffee! I had already heard about it, that the grand people ate coffee, but that an old charcoal-burner had said, “My dear people, I am certainly black. Look at me and see if I’m black or no! But I’m not so black and bad as the black broth from Morocco. The devil has invented it, and the peasant will come to an end if he eats it.” I do not know if the charcoal-burner knew how wisely he had spoken, and I do not know if they had believed him. I only know that everyone was crazy for coffee, and that I could not help putting my spoon into the black soup— Ugh! that isn’t good, that is as bitter as gall! The devil has certainly invented it—— “You haven’t put any sugar,” laughed Simmerl, and threw some pieces out of a cup into my bowl. Now it was a little different. Simmerl looked at me and grinned to himself. I should have liked to know why. After breakfast it was “God keep you!” to the Zutrum people and off to school. I had become quite brave and held out my right hand when saying “Good-bye and thank you,” just like a well-mannered, grown-up man, and it occurred to me, “How easy it is to be good when one is not at home!” As we went along the hill-meadow old Kickel was to be seen with a wooden fork spreading haycocks out so that they should dry better in the new sunshine. To-day I saw, for the first time, that he was very decrepit, bent double almost to cracking-point, and swaying and limping at every step. His knee-breeches had certainly once been leather, but now they had many, many patches of other stuffs stuck on with large, ungainly stitches. His feet and very brown ankles were bare. Breast and arms were covered by a coarse brown shirt; the old felt hat sat like a battered inverted kettle on the little grey head, but all the same it was decorated by an eagle’s feather, which stood up high into the air. Knees, elbows and fingers were all so terribly bony that one felt as if the old man would never be able to do anything properly for the rest of his life; he was like a deformed and twisted oak tree up on the high land where the storm-wind cripples everything. When he caught sight of us he raised his hat politely and then he went on working.