She passed her hand across her forehead in a bewildered way.
“I don’t know,” she said, “it seems as though I had forgotten. Perhaps it’s because I don’t talk. I’m the eldest, and all the others dance and play games, and the Piper, he plays all the time and so I don’t have anybody to talk to at all.”
Fred was now quite confirmed in his new idea; and yet the girl was so pretty and gentle that he could not bear to think of her being out of her mind.
“Why don’t you go back,” he asked kindly, “if you’re unhappy? Was it Hameln you came from?”
She shook her head.
“It was so long ago,” she said, “I can’t recollect.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been much over fourteen years. I’m only fifteen myself. Perhaps I’d ought to have introduced myself. I’m Fred Taylor, of New York and I’m studying German at Hanover. It’s purer there, you know, than it is most anywhere else.”
Fred was uncertain how much she understood. Her own language, he had noticed, was very simple, and when he used an unaccustomed word her forehead would contract as though she could not follow him. Her next words, though, showed that she had understood his introduction.
“I am Gretchen Haffelfinger,” she said simply; “and you must not think I am not happy, because I am. The Piper is very kind to us.”
“And do you live up here all the time?”