“Do you expect him soon?”
“No; he’s away,”—hesitating—“at Haltern.”
“Well, it’s this way. I am with a friend. We came from Bremen yesterday, and we’re on our way to Cologne for a holiday. We’ve relatives living at Klein Recken, and thought of spending a few days with them. We tried to walk there last night from Haltern, but in the awful weather we lost the road. My friend fell ill, too. Fortunately, we found your barn, and slept in the straw. We’ll pay, of course, for what damage we did. But the question is this: Can you put us up for a day or two, until my friend gets really better? We’ll pay you well, if you would.”
“You can’t stay here that long, but you may come into the kitchen and warm yourself. You may stay until twelve o’clock.”
I reflected. A few hours’ grace! We had better take it and see how things turned out.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll fetch my friend and our knapsacks.”
With the assistance of the son of the house, a strong lad about fifteen years of age, I got Wallace into the kitchen. We were given seats in front of the roaring kitchener. My friend seemed much better.
Our arrival was obviously an extraordinary event, as well it might be; but if the people did conjecture at all, they showed it only in a suppressed kind of excitement. There was no atmosphere of suspicion, and the few curious questions the woman asked us were easily parried.
There were three girls and the boy in the family, all approaching maturity. While the woman bustled about preparing a breakfast for us, two of the girls and the boy made ready to go out. I did not like that, and tried to find out where they were going.