“How are supplies?”
Dard tensed. There was more to that question than was merely routine. He surveyed the pitiful array on the shelves jealously.
“How much?” he asked, unable to keep out of his voice the almost despairing resentment he felt.
“Maybe enough for two days—if you can put up such a packet.”
Swiftly Dard’s eyes measured and portioned. “If it is really necessary—” he couldn’t stop that half-protest. This systematic robbing of their own, too scanty hoard—for what? If Lars would only explain! But he knew Lars’ answer to that, too: The less one knew, the better, these days. Even in a family that could be so. All right, he’d make up that packet of food and leave it here on the table and in the morning it would he gone—given to someone be didn’t know and would never see. And within a week, or maybe a month it would happen again…
“Tonight?” He asked only that as he sawed away at the wood-like meat.
“I don’t know.”
And at the tone of his brother’s answer Dard dropped the dull knife to turn and watch Lars’ face. There was a new light in the man’s eyes, a brightness about him that his younger brother had never seen since Dessie’s mother had died two years before.
“You’ve finished,” Dard said slowly, hardly daring tobelieve what might be true, that they might be free!
“I’ve finished. They’ll pass the word and then we’ll be sent for.”