“I am ready. What shall I do?”
“Help me to take things out of my pockets.”
“Don’t press too hard,” she said as he took each parcel.
At last the pockets were empty.
“Where shall we dine?” she asked.
“Here, as the dining-room is transformed into a laboratory.”
“Then let us begin by making a good fire. I wet my feet coming from the station.”
“I do not know whether there is any wood.”
“Let us see.”
She took the candle and they passed into the kitchen, which, like the dining-room, was a laboratory, a stable where Saniel kept in cages pigs from India and rabbits for his experiments, and where Joseph heaped pell-mell the things that were in his way, without paying any attention to the stove in which there never had been a fire. But their search was vain; there was everything in this kitchen except fire-wood.