The friendly German woman stared. She had grown to look upon her lodger, Jim, very much as if he were her own son. He wasn’t often so cross as this and never had been so against Dorothy.
“Well, well! Ah so! Well!”
With this brief comment she made haste to set the dinner on the table and to call Hans from his own task of hoeing the driveway. Presently he had washed his face and hands at the little sink in the kitchen, rubbed them into a fine glow with the spotless roller-towel, and was ready for the great meal of the day—his generous “Dutch dinner.”
Usually Jim was as ready as Hans to enjoy it; but, to-day, he left his food untasted on his plate while he stared gloomily out of the window, and for so long that Griselda grew curious and went to see what might be happening without.
“What seest thou, lad? Is aught wrong beyond already?”
“No. Oh! come back to table, Mrs. Roemer. I’ll tell you. I’d just got fixed, you know, to do a lot of hard work—both kinds. Now comes this silly thing! I suppose Mrs. Calvert must have let Dolly ask me else she wouldn’t have done it. It seems some simpleton or other, likely as not that Mr. Ford——”
“Call no names, son!” warned Hans, disposing of a great mouthful, to promptly reprimand the angry youth. Hans was a man of peace. He hated nothing so much as ill temper.
Jim said no more, but his wrath cooling began to eat his dinner with a zeal that made up for lost time. Having finished he went out saying:
“I’ll finish my job when I come back. I’m off now for the Shop.”
He always spoke of the smithy under the Great Balm of Gilead Tree as if it began with a capital letter. The old man who called himself a “blacksmith”—and was, in fact, a good one—and dwelt in the place stood to eager James Barlow as the type of everything good and great. He was sure, as he hurried along the road, that Mr. Seth would agree with him in regard to Dorothy’s telegram.