“Where have they gone?” asked Swithin painfully. “A pound for every English word you speak. A pound!” and he made an O with his fingers.
The corners of the shoemaker's lips curled. “Geld! Mf! Eilen Sie, nur!”
But in Swithin a sullen anger had begun to burn. “If you don't tell me,” he said, “it'll be the worse for you.”
“Sind ein komischer Kerl!” remarked the shoemaker. “Hier ist meine Frau!”
A battered-looking woman came hurrying down the passage, calling out in German, “Don't let him go!”
With a snarling sound the shoemaker turned his back, and shambled off.
The woman furtively thrust a letter into Swithin's hand, and furtively waited.
The letter was from Rozsi.
“Forgive me”—it ran—“that I leave you and do not say goodbye. To-day our father had the call from our dear Father-town so long awaited. In two hours we are ready. I pray to the Virgin to keep you ever safe, and that you do not quite forget me.—Your unforgetting good friend, ROZSI.”
When Swithin read it his first sensation was that of a man sinking in a bog; then his obstinacy stiffened. 'I won't be done,' he thought. Taking out a sovereign he tried to make the woman comprehend that she could earn it, by telling him where they had gone. He got her finally to write the words out in his pocket-book, gave her the sovereign, and hurried to the Goldene Alp, where there was a waiter who spoke English. The translation given him was this: