“Well, by George!” he cried, rising and offering his hand with frank delight, and introducing me in a single comprehensive wave to his wife and daughters. “Yes, sir,” he went on, “and I wish I had an Oboid here right now—up in the basement of that stone boarding-house on the knoll there—just for the sake of heating up, and shutting down the valves, and blowing the whole damned thing sky-high. That would suit me, sir, right down to the ground.”
“Were strangers here, sir,” he explained in answer to my question: “we’d seen a good deal of the Dutch at home—I mean our home—and we thought we’d like to take a look at ‘em in the place they come from. Well, sir, we’ve had our look, and we’re satisfied. We don’t want any more on our plate, thank you. One helping is an elegant sufficiency. Do you know the trick they played on us? Why, I took a team of horses yesterday from a place they called Ibsenburg or Ilsenburg, or some such name, and had it explained to my driver that he was to take us up to the top of the Brocken, there, and stop all night, and fetch us back this morning. When we got up as far as Shierke, there, it was getting pretty dark, and the women-folks were nervous, and so we laid up for the night. There didn’t seem anything for the driver to do but set around in the kitchen and drink beer, and he needed money for that, and so I gave him some loose silver, and told him to make himself at home. We got the words out of a dictionary for that—machen sie selbst zu Heim we figured ‘em out to be—and I spoke them at him slowly and distinctly, so that he had no earthly excuse for not understanding. But, would you believe it, sir, the miserable cuss just up and skipped out, horses, rig and all, while we were getting supper! And here we were this morning, landed high and dry. No conveyance, nobody to comprehend a word of English, no nothing. We haven’t seen the top of their darned mountain even.”
“What I’m more concerned about, I tell Wilbur,” put in the lady, “is seeing the bottom of it. If they had only sense enough to make valises and bonnet-boxes ball-shaped, we could have rolled ‘em down hill.”
“There’ll be no trouble about all that,” I assured them, and we talked for a little about the simple enough process of getting their luggage carried down to the village, and of finding a vehicle there. I, indeed, agreed to make one of their party on quitting the Harz, that very afternoon.
“And now tell me about the Grundys,” I urged, when these more pressing matters were out of the way. “I got a wire to-day saying—hinting that they are in luck’s way again.”
“Is that so?” exclaimed the American, at once surprised and pleased. “I’m glad to hear it. I can’t guess what it might be in. Grundy’s got so many irons in the fire—some white hot, some lukewarm, some frosted straight through—you never can tell. The funny thing is—he can’t tell himself. Why, sir, those men of yours in the City of London, they don’t know any more about business than a babe unborn. If they were in New York they’d have their eyeteeth skinned out of their heads in the shake of a lamb’s tail. Why, we’ve been milking them dry for a dozen years back. And yet, you know, somehow——”
“Somehow—?” I echoed, encouragingly.
“Well, sir, somehow—that’s the odd thing about it—they don’t stay milked.”