“Yes, a little above the peasant class,” remarked Armand, patting the shoulder of the four-year-old boy, Freidrich’s brother, who walked beside the French officer, casting eager, curious glances up at him. “What is your name, little one?” he asked in German.
The child hung his head in silence, but the little girl, her bright eyes turned for a moment from the basket, the center of all their hopes, answered promptly:
“His name is Wilhelm, Herr Officer, and my name is Adelheid. And our father’s name is Franz Kraft. I am seven years old.”
She ended with a smile and a bobbing curtsey. Larry said, in a peculiar German something like Bob’s, “Thank you, my little maiden.” He was about to ask her if the cottage which now appeared in sight was her home, but his German failing him, he asked it instead of Lucy in English, remarking, “He must do quite a business—this Franz. He has enough wood cut already to last the hospital all winter.”
The woodcutter had heaped his fagots in neat piles over about one-half of the clearing, which covered perhaps two acres.
“He has men come to help him cut,” Lucy explained. “They cart the wood away to towns and villages near here. He’s quite a well-known character, to judge by the visitors he has. If he’s popular, I don’t care for German taste.”
“Now, Fräulein? Can we see now?” begged Adelheid, dancing up and down in her impatience.
“Yes, right now,” consented Lucy, sitting down on a pine stump in front of the cottage and taking the basket from Larry.
As she uncovered it a gasp of delight rose from three little throats, and Lucy felt Freidrich’s and Wilhelm’s panting breaths against her face, as they bent toward her in irresistible excitement.
“Pauvres petits,” murmured Michelle, touching Adelheid’s thin little shoulder.