"There isn't anything under the seats. Perhaps the man has got it on the box. Ask him, Anna; I really can't stand it."
Anna did not quite know how to attract his attention. It seemed undignified to poke him, but she did not know his name, and the wind blew her voice back in the direction of Stralsund when she had cleared it, and coughed, and called out rather shyly, "Oh, Kutscher! Kutscher!"
Then she remembered that oh was not German, and that Uncle Joachim had used sonorous achs in its place, and she began again, "Ach, Kutscher! Kutscher!"
Letty giggled. "Go it, Aunt Anna," she said encouragingly, "dig him in the ribs with your umbrella—or I will, if you like."
Her mother, with her handkerchief to her nose, exhorted her not to be vulgar. Letty explained at some length that she was only being nice, and offering assistance.
"I really shall have to poke him," said Anna, her faint cries of Kutscher quite lost in the rattling of the carriage and the howling of the wind. "Or perhaps you would touch his arm, Miss Leech."
Miss Leech turned, and very gingerly touched his sleeve. He at once whistled to his horses, who stopped dead, snatched off his cap, and looking down at Anna inquired her commands.
It was done so quickly that Anna, whose conversational German was exceedingly rusty, was quite unable to remember the word for fish, and sat looking up at him helplessly, while she vainly searched her brains.
"What is fish in German?" she said, appealing to Susie, distressed that the man should be waiting capless in the rain.
"Letty, what's the word for fish?" inquired Susie sternly.