I was afraid there might be another large family, all with colds in their heads, like the five which Clarke had drawn, waiting for me, so that prompted me to choose this benevolent-looking old grandfather.
The old man took me home with him to one of the best houses in the village, although there was not much difference between them. His house was made of plaster which had been whitewashed, and had in it a good-sized kitchen, where the family really lived, and an inner room which contained a large picture of the Royal Family, all in uniform, and very gorgeous uniforms, too. Even the young daughter had a uniform which looked warlike enough for a Lieutenant-Colonel's. There was also a desk in this room, where the father of the family—for the old man who brought me in was the grandfather—conducted his business. He was some sort of a clerk, probably the reeve of the municipality, and did not work on the farm at all. There was a fine home-made carpet on the floor, but the room was bare and cheerless, with low ceiling, and inclined to be dark.
When we entered the kitchen, the family greeted me cordially, and I sat down to dinner with them. There were three girls and one brother, who was a soldier and home on leave.
Bromley went to work for a farmer on the other side of the village, but I saw him each night, for we all went back to a large three-storied building, which may once have been a boarding-house, to sleep each night, the guard escorting us solemnly both to and from work each day. This was a very good arrangement for us, too, for we had to be through work and have our supper over by eight o'clock each night.
After our prison diet, the meals we had here were ample and almost epicurean. We had soup—the real thing—made from meat, with plenty of vegetables; coffee with milk, but no sugar; cheese, homemade but very good; meat, both beef and pork; eggs in abundance; but never any pastry; and lots of potatoes, boiled in their skins, and fried.
There were plenty of fruit-trees, too, in Rossbach, growing along the road, and, strange to say, unmolested by the youngsters. The trees appear to belong to the municipality, and the crop is sold by auction each year to the highest bidder. They are quite ornamental, too, standing in a straight row on each side of the road.
The farmers who lived in this village followed the oldest methods of farming I had ever seen, though I saw still more primitive methods in Hanover. Vegetables, particularly potatoes and mangels, were grown in abundance, and I saw small fields of stubble, though what the grain was I do not know. I saw a threshing-machine drawn by a tractor going along the road, and one of the girls told me it was made in England. The woman who had the farm next to the one I was on was a widow, her husband having been killed in the war, and she had no horses at all, and cultivated her tiny acres with a team of cows. It seems particularly consistent with German character to make cows work! They hate to see anything idle, and particularly of the female sex.
Each morning we rode out to the field, for the farms are scattered over a wide area, and three-acre and five-acre fields are the average size. The field where we went to work digging potatoes was about a mile distant from the house, and when I say we rode, I mean the brother and I—the girls walked. I remonstrated at this arrangement, but the girls themselves seemed to be surprised that it should be questioned, and the surly young brother growled something at me which I knew was a reflection on my intelligence.
When we got into the field and began to dig potatoes, good, clear-skinned yellow ones, Lena Schmidt, one of the girls, who was a friend of the family, though not a relation, I think, began to ask me questions about Canada (they put the accent on the third syllable). Lena had been to Sweden, so she told me proudly, and had picked up quite a few English words. She was a good-looking German girl, with a great head of yellow hair, done in braids around her head. The girls were all fairly good-looking though much tanned from outdoor work. Lena had heard women worked in the house, and not outside, in Canada—was it true?
I assured her it was true.