"Such a house as you suggest is not within my knowledge," he said after lengthy deliberation, "but my wife is inside, and you might talk with her. If she agrees, I would be quite willing to have you stay. And now will you excuse me? I have work to attend to," and he held out his hand.
Pleased and surprised over this unexpected turn, Mr. Delrick grasped the offered hand and asked, "Do you mean you will abide by whatever your wife decides?"
"Yes, just that," replied Mr. Lesa as he departed.
On the call to enter after his knocking, Mr. Delrick stepped into the room and found a little girl busy knitting a thick stocking by the window. When he asked if he might speak to her mother, Stefeli said, "Oh, she'll soon be back. When she heard you rap, she went into the other room because she was crying a little."
"Oh, I am so sorry. Has something sad happened to cause your mother to cry?"
"Yes, Vinzi has gone away for the whole summer, and mother doesn't know the people he is with," Stefeli informed him.
"I suppose Vinzi is your brother?" sympathetically. "Why did he have to go away?"
"I don't quite know," answered Stefeli, "but perhaps because he took piano lessons from Alida."
"Well, that is a peculiar thing," remarked Mr. Delrick, smiling. "I suppose you were with your brother a great deal, and you must miss him sadly?"
"Yes, indeed, and so does mother, and he is missed at the pasture too. We were always together. Father has a cowboy now, and mother will not let me go with him. Father said at dinner time the cows won't graze, but run about as if lost, and Schwarzeli wants to jump all the fences, and when the cowboy runs after her, she grows wilder still. I can well believe that, after she has known us so long and so well. Of course she does not know a strange cowboy's voice, and doesn't feel that things are right at all, poor Schwarzeli!"