shirt, fastens his short knee-breeches with a girdle round his
waist, claps his high, feather-crowned hat upon his waving curls,
and with bare legs, shod in mighty boots, strides over the hill-
sides to his Gretchen's door.

She is waiting for him, you may be sure, ready dressed; and a very
sweet, old-world picture she makes, standing beneath the great
overhanging gables of the wooden chalet. She, too, favours the
national green; but, as relief, there is no lack of bonny red
ribbons, to flutter in the wind, and, underneath the ornamented
skirt, peeps out a bright-hued petticoat. Around her ample breast
she wears a dark tight-fitting bodice, laced down the front. (I
think this garment is called a stomacher, but I am not sure, as I
have never liked to ask.) Her square shoulders are covered with the
whitest of white linen. Her sleeves are also white; and being very
full, and of some soft lawnlike material, suggest the idea of folded
wings. Upon her flaxen hair is perched a saucy round green hat.
The buckles of her dainty shoes, the big eyes in her pretty face,
are all four very bright. One feels one would like much to change
places for the day with Hans.

Arm-in-arm, looking like some china, but exceedingly substantial
china, shepherd and shepherdess, they descend upon the town. One
rubs one's eyes and stares after them as they pass. They seem to
have stepped from the pictured pages of one of those old story-books
that we learnt to love, sitting beside the high brass guard that
kept ourselves and the nursery-fire from doing each other any
serious injury, in the days when the world was much bigger than it
is now, and much more real and interesting.