“Then I will get him.”
She came back, presently, and put it into Lynn’s hand. It was made of three strands of heavy rope, braided, looped to form a handle, tied with a blue ribbon, and ravelled at the ends. “See,” she said, “is it not most beautiful?”
“Yes,” agreed Lynn, absently.
“Miss Iris have told me how to make him.”
Lynn came to himself with a start. “And this,” she went on, pointing to the gilded potato-masher that hung under the swinging lamp, “and this,—but no, it is you who have made this for me. Miss Iris showed you how.” She pointed to the butterfly made so long ago, but still in its pristine glory.
He said nothing, but by his face Fräulein Fredrika saw that she had made a mistake—that she had somehow been clumsy. After all, it was very difficult, this conversing with gentlemen. Franz was easy to get along with, but the others? She shook her head in despair, and immediately relinquished the thought of entertaining Lynn.
She could not tell him that she had changed her mind, that she no longer wanted him to sit with her, and that he could go down in the shop to wait for Herr Kaufmann. Painfully, in the silence, she considered several expedients, and at last her face brightened.
“Now that you are here,” she said, “to guard mine house, it will be of a possibility for me to go out for some vegetables for mine brudder’s dinner. He will have been very hungry from his long ride, and you see it is not going to rain. You will excuse me for a short time, yes?”
“Gladly,” answered Lynn, with sincerity.