From Kiel we motored one night to dine
with a Count and Countess in their country house. This house
had been built perhaps two hundred years, and was on one side of
a square, the other three sides being formed by the great stone
barns in which the produce of the estate was stored. Although
the first floor of the house was elevated about eight feet above
the ground, the family, on account of the dampness of that part
of the world, lived in the second story, and the dining room
was on this story. An ancestor of the Count had, at a time when
this part of the country was part of Denmark and about the year
1700, lent all his available money to the King of Denmark. A
crude painting in the hall showed him sitting in the hall of
this particular house, smoking a long pipe and surrounded by
three or four sisters who were all spinning. Our hostess told us
that this picture represented the lending ancestor being supported
by his sisters while waiting the return of the loan which he
had made to the Danish king, an early example of the situation
disclosed by the popular song which runs: "Everybody works but
father.
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