The child interrupted him with tears and sobs: "Please let me only see if they are coming. Mon père said he would come back to-night. He is lost. I thought yesterday he was going to die. Oh, please, I know the way he went. It's not very dark. I can always make him better."
The landlord was in despair. He wanted the assistance of some interpreter, and yet he was afraid to leave the child, lest she should give him the slip and run out into the snow.
The appearance of the German was a great relief, for this young man had not been accustomed to hide his light under a bushel. Wherever he went he exhibited his knowledge of English. Already that day the landlord had been astonished by his fluency in this most intricate and embarrassing tongue.
In a few words he described the situation to the new-comer. The German immediately addressed himself to the weeping child: "Your papa is out in ze snow, my leetle maid."
The child's tears stopped; she raised her dark eyes pleadingly to his face: "Not my papa—mon père. Oh, please take me to find him."
This was rather embarrassing. The compassionate German looked out into the snowy night: "Wid all my heart I would help you, liebe fräulein, but you will no doubt perceive I know none of ze paths, and you—" He looked down at the tiny figure.
Almost unconsciously these two men had been answering that strange womanliness in the little face by treating this child as if she had been three times her age.
The German smiled and looked at the landlord: "Es ist nur ein kindlein." Then to Laura, with an assumption of sternness, "Leetle maids are sometimes weelful. Zey should understand zat ze elders know best. Come now wid me to ze fire."
He put out his hand to lead her, but Laura shrank back, her eyes growing large with fear. She did not understand being so treated by a stranger. It made her long all the more for her friend's protecting tenderness. She rejected the hand held out to her with all the dignity of one double her age: then suddenly her child-heart failed. She threw herself on her knees on the cold stones, pressed her forehead against the door and wailed out her childish plaint: "Mon père! mon père! come back to Laura."
The landlord shook his head helplessly, but the young German, who had always prided himself on a certain determination of character, looked stern. "Dis ees all folly," he said; "as I said just now, leetle maids must not be weelful. Komme mit, mademoiselle; or, as I should say, come wid me, mees."