By this time a fat lad had ventured up, and stood gaping behind the maidens. He was not of Pfalzen, but the girls spoke to him as a cousin of the house. In spite of their encouragement, he merely gaped and stared, without answering a word. The pleasures of the table had, in fact, brought him into a state of speechless discomfort. It was not of wine that he had partaken, though it had freely circulated, to judge by the great empty gallon bottles, but he had stuck loyally to the principles laid down and acted on by his elders, of doing full justice to the dishes. Feeling now, therefore, exceedingly the worse for his praiseworthy exertions, he remained leaning disconsolately with his back against the wall long after the church-bells had struck up a merry clang, vigorously calling the Hofbauer, his men-servants and maid-servants and the strangers who were within his gates, to church. Good Kathi, however, whilst clearing away the empty glasses, looked compassionately upon him as on one of her fattening chickens in danger of pip, and patiently inveigled him to a cozy nook down stairs, where his heavy breathing and steady snorts kept time to her monotonous dish-washing. On he slept during prayers, during the hour spent at the Blauen Bock, when the Hofbauer treated the priest and his guests on this auspicious thanksgiving-day. He woke up, however, to do his duty like a man "with a mouthful of supper" whilst the horses were being put into the gigs. Then, in a state of heavy, speechless resignation, he was conveyed to his seat between a bauer and his wife, which, though a tight fit in the morning, had strangely become tighter, and where, circumstances thus pinning his arms to his side, and with his aching head upon his breast in the most uncomfortable of attitudes, the poor fat boy was jolted away in the twilight.
The other relations, all weightier mortals, more or less, than when they arrived, were packed and squeezed into their creaking vehicles; the very small vacuums remaining on or under the seats, to say nothing of broad laps, being filled with krapfen. You would indeed have supposed that the Hof were one great patent krapfen manufactory, with the sole right of making, baking by steam and selling these indigestible, leathery, yet brittle puffs so dear to the Tyrolese palate, had not the figures of men, women and children, humble guests at more modest dwellings, been seen filing along the highway or crossing the moorland slopes, each bearing a light but bulging bundle of krapfen tied up in a gay blue, crimson or yellow handkerchief.