Then she turned to me to explain the circumstances of the case.
"I have to let these ladies have their food cooked separately, for Magyar dishes would make them mortally ill. That is why I don't lay the table for three. Your favourite dishes would be death to these Germans."
The cook now brought in the stewed chicken.
Bessy tasted it first with a little spoon to see if it were salted enough, and also to see whether the cook had put parsley in it by mistake, for the doctor who was attending the little girl had forbidden every sort of seasoning ingredients in her food. Then she herself sliced up a roll of the best white bread for the little girl, poured some water for her into a glass, and warmed it a little by holding it tightly for a while between the palms of her hands instead of popping a live coal into it, as thoughtful mothers often do for their sick children. For the mother of the child, however, she had a bottle of Pilsener beer uncorked, and sent to her.
Only when they had dined was our dinner served.
Meanwhile, we did not resume our interrupted conversation; the servant was constantly passing in and out, and we could not speak before her. Then, after that, when we sat down to dinner (and a bitter meal it was to me) the thread of our conversation was broken as often as the cook came in with a new dish or to change a plate, and all that time she played the part of the amiable hostess, inviting me to fall to in good old Hungarian style.
"One morning," she said, "while I was doing my hair, my servant came and told me that a shabby-looking woman was outside, with a biggish girl, making inquiries about the lieutenant. I went out to them into the kitchen. I saw before me a blonde, blue-eyed woman, of about the same age as myself, and clinging to her arm was a lanky slip of a growing girl about ten or eleven years of age. In the woman's hand was a travelling-bag and an umbrella. She was in bourgeois costume, without the fashionable crinoline, and on her head was a simple felt cap; her girl was dressed in just the same way. They both wore their hair quite smooth and combed back from the forehead.
"The woman wished me good-day in German.
"I asked her what she wanted.
"The woman replied that she wanted her husband, Mr. Wenceslaus Kvatopil.