"You never do know anything," said Aunt Rikchen. Grollmann shrugged his shoulders, took the tray on which the second breakfast was prepared for his master and left the room, but came back in a few minutes and set down the tray, as he had taken it away, on the dresser.
"Well?" asked Aunt Rikchen irritably, "is it wrong again?"
"My master is asleep," said Grollmann. Aunt Rikchen in her astonishment almost dropped the coffee-pot from which she had just poured Reinhold's coffee. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed, "how can my brother sleep at this hour! He has never in his whole life done such a thing before. Is he ill?"
"I don't think so," said Grollmann.
"Has anything happened this morning?"
"This morning, no."
"Or yesterday evening?" asked Aunt Rikchen, whose sharp ears had detected the short pause which Grollmann had made between "this morning" and "no."
"I suppose so," said Grollmann, staring before him, while the wrinkles in his weather-beaten face seemed to deepen every moment.
"Miserable man, tell me at once!" exclaimed Aunt Rikchen, seizing the old man by the arm and shaking him, as if she wished to shake his secret out of him.
"I know nothing," said Grollmann, freeing himself; "is the coffee ready for the Captain?"