HASSENREUTER
[Tense with interest.] Did that Polish girl who fought like a lioness for Mrs. Knobbe's baby the other day ever show herself again?
JOHN
She's the very one. She's the one what they pulled out o' the water this morning. An' I has to say it without bitin' my tongue off: Bruno Mechelke took that girl's life.
HASSENREUTER
[Quickly.] Then she was probably his mistress?
JOHN
Ask mother! I don' know about that! That's what I was scared of; that's the reason I rather didn't come home at all no more, that my own wife was loaded down with a crowd like that an' didn't have the strength to shake it off.
HASSENREUTER
Come, children!