With a start and a vivid blush she dropped her eyes, fiddled nervously with her blouse for a moment, and then looked up and laughed again. "I don't mind your guessing," she challenged.
"Something to do with——"
She interrupted with some vigorous nods. "You did tell some taradiddles though. Hans didn't really do anything. I saw it all."
"If he had not rushed up to me just when I called him, my dear young lady, none of us would have got out of the scrape as easily as we did," I said seriously. It would never do for her to think small beer of her lover. "It was that and the way he went for the brutes that decided everything and sent them scuttling off."
"But he didn't do anything, Herr Lassen!"
"Do you mean to tell me you didn't see him knock that dark brute, the biggest of them I mean, head foremost into the gutter?"
"Did he really?" she cried, open-eyed.
"If you didn't see that, you can't have seen everything as you said."
"But he told me he hadn't a chance to do a thing."
"Bravo, Hans!" I exclaimed. "Just like him. You wouldn't expect him to spread himself and swagger about his own pluck, would you?"