The old German raises his battered hat respectfully to the little mistress.
“Hot day, missie,” he mutters as salutation.
“You must be dreadfully hot,” Ruby says compassionately.
The old man’s face is hot enough in all conscience. He raises his broad-brimmed hat again, and wipes the perspiration from his damp forehead with a large blue-cotton handkerchief.
“It’s desp’rate hot,” Dick puts in as his item to the conversation.
“You ought to take a rest, Hans,” the little girl suggests with ready commiseration. “I’m sure dad wouldn’t mind. He doesn’t like me to do things when it’s so hot, and he wouldn’t like you either. Your face is just ever so red, as red as the fire, and you look dreadful tired.”
“Ach! and I am tired,” the old man ejaculates, with a broad smile. “But what of that? But a little more work, a little more tiring out, and the dear Lord will send for old Hans to be with Him for ever in that best and brightest land of all. Is it not so, missie? The work has not come to those little hands of thine yet, but the day may come when thou too wilt be glad to leave the toil behind thee, and be at rest. Ach! but what am I saying?” The smile broadens on the tired old face. “Why do I talk of death to thee, liebchen, whose life is all play? The sunlight is made for such as thee, on whom the shadows have not even begun to fall.”
Ruby gives just the tiniest suspicion of a sob stifled in a sniff.
“You’re not to talk like that, Hans,” she remonstrates in rather an injured manner. “We don’t want you to die—do we, Dick?” she appeals to her faithful servitor.
“No more’n we don’t,” Dick agrees.