She woke up immediately. “Ja, zeker!” was the prompt reply. “Net gisteren thuis gekomen!”
This was all right, of course. Why does he come home and go away, I wondered. But, after all, that was a small matter. He was at home now. A peripatetic baker, perhaps, might be some very special and clever artist in pies and tarts and rich cake—and it was the humble, ordinary baker that we were in search of. I stated this. “Geen banket baker is noodig, juffrouw!” I explained. “Een gewonen baker bedoel ik—een gewonen alledaagschen baker. Bestaat er een hier?”
THE BROKEN SIESTA.
She had meantime summoned two young men from a sort of den behind the shop, and now communicated my wishes to them with an interest and an animation that I hadn’t expected. They led us rapidly half a mile across fields, and then up a little lane. The last few yards were done in good record time, I should say.
This sympathetic promptitude we highly appreciated, as we felt now more and more famished, the nearer we approached provisions. We reached the baker’s house breathless, and were ushered panting into a kind of waiting room. At least you couldn’t call it a shop exactly.
When the baker came into this apartment (by the way it was a woman, that turned up—a portly and middle-aged woman) we noticed that she was rather dishevelled, as if just awakened from a much needed siesta. I was sorry, but not surprised. Bakers are often that way, you know. They bake during the night, and sleep during the day. Thus they are rather drowsy and cross, if you wake them up. She looked both. There was a portentous frown upon her brow; and really, she seemed somewhat of the virago type. That made me doubly polite.
“Duizendmaal vergiffenis, banketbaker!” I apologised with my best bow. “Het spijt mij geweldig.—Maar zult gij zoo goed willen zijn—?”
WOU JE ETEN?
“Ja ja!” she interrupted impatiently; “Waar? Heb je een rijtuig?”
“Een rijtuig?” I exclaimed in bewilderment. “Nee. Ik heb geen rijtuig. Maar mag ik u beleefd verzoeken of U zoo goed—.”