I dare not
guess how much more time was wasted; nor how often we drove off,
merely to drive back again and renew interrupted conversations
about nothing, before the Toll House was fairly left behind. Alas!
and not a mile down the grade there stands a ranche in a sunny
vineyard, and here we must all dismount again and enter.
Only the old lady was at home, Mrs. Guele, a brown old Swiss dame,
the picture of honesty; and with her we drank a bottle of wine and
had an age-long conversation, which would have been highly
delightful if Fanny and I had not been faint with hunger. The
ladies each narrated the story of her marriage, our two Hebrews
with the prettiest combination of sentiment and financial bathos.
Abramina, specially, endeared herself with every word. She was as
simple, natural, and engaging as a kid that should have been
brought up to the business of a money-changer. One touch was so
resplendently Hebraic that I cannot pass it over. When her "old
man" wrote home for her from America, her old man's family would
not intrust her with the money for the passage, till she had bound
herself by an oath--on her knees, I think she said--not to employ
it otherwise.
This had tickled Abramina hugely, but I think it tickled me fully
more.
Mrs. Guele told of her home-sickness up here in the long winters;
of her honest, country-woman troubles and alarms upon the journey;
how in the bank at Frankfort she had feared lest the banker, after
having taken her cheque, should deny all knowledge of it--a fear I
have myself every time I go to a bank; and how crossing the
Luneburger Heath, an old lady, witnessing her trouble and finding
whither she was bound, had given her "the blessing of a person
eighty years old, which would be sure to bring her safely to the
States.
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