The two women looked in each other's eyes, and each divined that the other was good.
"Good afternoon," said Nurse Branscome. "I am sorry to be late."
"But it is we who are early.… We tell the liddle one she must have bribed the cabdain, she was so craved to arr-rive!"
"Are you related to her?"
"Ach, no," chimed in husband and wife together as soon as they understood. "But friendts—friendts, Korona—hein?"
The husband explained that they had made the child's acquaintance on the first day out from New York, and had taken to her at once, seeing her so forlorn. He was a baker by trade, and by name Müller; and he and his wife, after doing pretty well in Philadelphia, were returning home to Bremen, where his brother (also a baker) had opened a prosperous business and offered him a partnership.
—"Which he can well afford," commented Frau Müller. "For my husband is beyond combetition as a master-baker; and at the end all will go to his brother's two sons.… We have not been gifen children of our own."
"Yet home is home," added her husband, with an expansive smile, "though it be not the Vaterland, Mees Korona—hein?" He eyed the child quizzically, and turned to Nurse Branscome. "She is badriotic so as you would nevar think—
"'Brit-ons nevar, nevar, nev-ar-will be Slavs!'"
He intoned it ludicrously, casting out both hands and snapping his fingers to the tune.