“Ach! this is nefer von of de kinder I saw yesterday?” she cried.
“Don’t you know this little girl, Mrs. Kranz?” asked Ruth, smiling. “This is Maria Maroni.”
“Ach! I nefer did!” exclaimed Mrs. Kranz, using an expression that she must have picked up from her American neighbors. “Vell! I lofe clean kinder,” and she delivered a resounding kiss upon Maria’s darkly flushed cheek. “Undt how pretty she iss.”
“I am sure she is quite as good as she is pretty,” said Ruth, smiling. “You ought to have just such a little girl as Maria to help you, Mrs. Kranz.”
“Ach! I would lofe to have such a girl,” declared the good lady. “Come you all right back to mine poller. Iky! ’tend to the store yet,” she shouted to a lanky youth lounging on the sidewalk.
“He vill eat up all mine dried apples, yet, undt trink soda-pop, if I don’t vatch him. Some day dot Iky iss goin’ to svell right up undt bust! But he lifs up stairs undt his mutter iss a hard vorkin’ vidow.”
“As though that excused Iky for stuffing himself with dried apples,” whispered Agnes to Ruth. Ruth looked at her admonishingly and Agnes subsided.
Mrs. Kranz bustled about to put coffee-cake and other toothsome dainties, beside bottles of lemon-soda, before the three visitors. She treated Maria just as nicely as she did Ruth and Agnes. Ruth had not been mistaken in her judgment of Mrs. Kranz. She had to own such a big body to hold her heart!
Ruth told her how they had talked with Maroni and how he had agreed to clean up the cellar, and get rid of the decayed vegetables daily. But it was, without doubt, Maria’s improved appearance, more than anything else, that thawed the good lady.
“Ach! it iss de way de vorld iss made,” sighed Mrs. Kranz. “That Joe Maroni, he hass six kinder; I haf none. This mädchen, she shall help me in de house, undt in de store. I buy her plenty clean dresses. I’ll talk to that Joe. Ven I am madt mit him I can’t talk, for he smile, an’ smile——Ach! how can I fight mit a man dot smiles all de time?”