CHAPTER XI.
Black Forest House: and the sociability therein--Its perfume--George positively declines to remain in bed after four o'clock in the morning--The road one cannot miss--My peculiar extra instinct--An ungrateful party--Harris as a scientist--His cheery confidence--The village: where it was, and where it ought to have been--George: his plan--We promenade a la Francais--The German coachman asleep and awake--The man who spreads the English language abroad.
There was one night when, tired out and far from town or village, we slept in a Black Forest farmhouse.

The great charm about the Black Forest house is its sociability.

The cows are in the next room, the horses are upstairs, the geese and ducks are in the kitchen, while the pigs, the children, and the chickens live all over the place.
You are dressing, when you hear a grunt behind you.
"Good-morning! Don't happen to have any potato peelings in here?
No, I see you haven't; good-bye." Next there is a cackle, and you see the neck of an old hen stretched round the corner.
"Fine morning, isn't it?
You don't mind my bringing this worm of mine in here, do you?
It is so difficult in this house to find a room where one can enjoy one's food with any quietness.

From a chicken I have always been a slow eater, and when a dozen--there, I thought they wouldn't leave me alone.

Now they'll all want a bit.