made a circuit of the town, and lost every idea of the way. Here an old woman volunteered to conduct us to the station, as she was going very near it herself. She looked tidy, though her feet were stockingless, and her coarse jacket was mended in many places. "I suppose you have just been to market?" said Midsie. "No, Fräulein, but the old women here get a little soup and vegetables every day from the town, and I have been to fetch it." "And how do you live otherwise. Where does the breakfast come from?" "I go in the fields, Fräulein, and earn sometimes eight kreutzers (twopence-halfpenny), sometimes a kreutzer more or a kreutzer less. For my little room I pay ten shillings a year rent, but the town pays the rest,-it costs eighteen gulden (thirty shillings) in all." "Are you not too old to work?" asked little Jessie, with tears in her eyes. “Oh! Fräulein, I'm not so very old; only sixty. My friends are older women than I, and work harder. There they come, my friends." The friends were much like herself, and appeared to have been on the same errand, each carrying a small basket, from which peeped the lid of a green earthen pot. We mustered a few kreutzers among us for the poor old creature, who wished us a safe return home with tears of joy; and that glad, sunburnt face was our last remembrance of Worms. To-morrow we return to England, by way of Frankfort and Cologne. CONCLUSION. I think it is always the most painful part of travellingthis leave-taking of pleasant compagnons de voyage. Farewell, oh! unknown fellow-travellers whom we have never met, yet may be said to part from with regret. Dear listeners to our stories and adventures, kind participators in our pleasures, all of us-Uncle John, Cousin Mil, quiet Midsie, little Jessie with the golden hair, scatter-brained Harry, and naughty papa Lightfoot, with his tricks and jokes—now thank you gratefully for being amused, and we hope that some other time we may make little trips together. Till then a lingering and loving FAREWELL. THE END. |