She stoutly refused him.
She was tall, dark, with sallow complexion and gleaming dark eyes, whose lids she had a trick of narrowing. Hans pointed to Bettina shivering and wet to her skin.
"You cannot refuse us a room," he said.
The woman shrugged her shoulders and hesitated.
Truly, Bettina would have moved any heart.
"Because of the child, poor darling," at last said the woman, "though my man, if he comes, may not like it." She shrugged expressively.
She rubbed Bettina's hands and feet with snow and made her dip them in water, and, undressing her, she wrapped her in a warm bed-gown of her own and covered her with a feather bed.
"Drink this," and she held warm milk to her blue little lips, and when the child was sinking into a doze, she started towards her kitchen. At the door she paused.
"I must dry the child's clothes," she said, and coming back gathered up the damp, draggled garments, Bettina never noticing.
As she was cleaning them in her kitchen she started violently. Bearing the dress on her arm she went to her room.