Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/168

Rh of twilight were fading from the clouds, and just as K. was taking off her hat she remembered that, after coming down from the castle, she turned aside to gather some flowers, and meanwhile hung her bag, containing sundry articles belonging to herself and my purse, on the railing of a bridge. What was to be done? We hoped that in the dusky twilight it might have escaped observation. K. proposed sending for a donkey and going herself in search of it. I consented, being most virtuously inclined (as those to whom it costs nothing are apt to be) to impress on Miss K. a salutary lesson. The donkey came, and off she set, attended by François and followed by a deformed donkey driver with the poking-stick, and everlasting A-R-R-H, much to the diversion of the denizens of Burgh-strasse, who were all on their doorsteps looking on. She was hardly out of my sight before I repented sending her off with these foreign people into the now obscure and deserted walk. I thought there was an evil omen in the donkey boy's hump-back, and, in short, I lost all feeling for "my ducats" in apprehension for "my daughter;" and when she returned in safety without the bag, I cared not for Herr Leisring's assurance "that it would yet be found; that it was rare anything was lost at Wiesbaden."

morning "my ducats" rose again to their full value in my esteem, and just as I was pondering on all I might have done with them, Leisring's broad,