"I must thank you," said the woman; "but it is hard, very hard----" She pressed the corner of her apron to her eyes, and turned away to the fire. "I do not mean about thanking you," she continued; "but I am sorry for my husband; it is the first time I am sure that he ever allowed guests to leave his house in this way."
"It is only on account of the children," said Elsa.
"Yes, yes," said the woman; "but we have had the children ill before, without being obliged to trouble other people about it. That was when we lived at Swantow, three miles from here; that is the Count's property too. We married there six years ago, but times were too hard, and the rent too high."
"Could not the Count have helped you?"
"The Count?"
The woman looked up with a sad smile on her worn face. She seemed about to say something, but left it unsaid, and busied herself silently over her pots.
"Is not the Count a kind man?" asked Elsa.
"He is not married," answered the woman; "he does not know what a father and mother feel when they must leave the house and farm where their first children were born, and where they had hoped to see them all grow up; and we should have got on here, though the rent is too high here also, if it had not been for the war. My husband had to go out with the Landwehr, and our two best men as well. I worked hard, even beyond my strength, but what can a poor woman do? Ah! my dear young lady, you know nothing of such trouble, and God grant that you never may!"
Elsa had seated herself on a stool, and was gazing into the flames. If she had known this before! She had thought that the Count was married. Strange, strange, that she had not asked about it; that the others had not mentioned it! If he should be at the castle, she was with her father and the good President certainly; but when Aunt Sidonie heard of it she would think it very improper; and if only he were a nice man, so that she could say on meeting him that she had already heard so much good of him from his tenants--it was most vexatious. Was it too late to change?
One of the children in the room next to the kitchen began to cry loudly; the farmer's wife hastened away.