Not finding a new argument, Lucy slowly followed her into the clearing, glancing doubtfully at Alan for guidance.
“All right. Let’s go for a moment. I’d like to see his face now. No Boche can successfully hide all his thoughts.”
“Perhaps not,” answered Lucy uncomfortably. “But the trouble is, I can’t either.”
She hardly met Franz’ eyes when the German opened the door for them, with his awkward bow and sour smile. To hide her face she bent over little Wilhelm and pulled up the ragged stockings falling down his cold, bare legs.
“How did you happen to see us, Franz?” inquired Alan, as nearly as his wretched German would permit. Alan’s verbs were always in the wrong place.
Franz puzzled for a second over the twisted phrase. Lucy wished Alan would not ask questions. As they entered the cottage Franz answered readily enough:
“I saw you and the Fräulein passing along by the clearing, and as you walked fast and seemed cold I sent the little one to ask you to warm yourselves by my fire. The Fräulein is very good to us. Trudchen!” he shouted, opening the door into the second room of the cottage.
Whatever Alan might decipher from Franz’ expression, Lucy did not get very far in reading it. He looked to her sombre, morose and unfriendly as ever, all his politeness no more than what his situation forced upon him. If his sharp eyes seemed to gleam with suspicious watchfulness she fancied that her own disturbed imagination put it there.
Alan, however, kept looking at Franz in critical silence, as the German pulled up stools before the fire and threw on pine boughs until the flame leaped up, all the while casting quick glances at his visitors and muttering short phrases of would-be civility, such as, “There, it burns. Draw up, now. The wife will come presently.”
Trudchen had answered in her dull, tired voice from the bedroom beyond, but she did not at once appear, but continued to drag her slippered feet back and forth across the floor. Lucy felt very uneasy, for she saw that Alan was in one of his moods of careless imprudence, which, when his thoughtless words or actions led to success, had won him fame and medals, and, when they brought him near disaster, had caused Arthur Leslie to frown over “that silly ass.”