“There’s some of them waited longer an’ got more. Johann Hunker did.”
“Johann Hunker may be a slick feller, but if I hadn’t sold when I did they mightn’t have come here at all, an’ then where would Johann Hunker be? Never you mind about that money. It’s a-drawin’ good interest.”
Dietz lifted his tall, bent form from his chair and shuffled over to the stove to dump his pipe. Then he turned again to his wife, a sudden grin spreading over his cheeks.
“Well, Momma, what about a little wine? Seeing Mrs. Williams is here, eh? A little home-made wine and coffee cake. We’ll give the childern some wine to-night, eh? Lilly, bring up the chairs to the table.”
The girl rose languidly to obey and Mrs. Dietz departed for the bedroom, returning a moment later with a long bottle. Lilly brought glasses and placed them on the red-figured table cover.
“Get the coffee cake, Lilly,” her mother ordered.
Dietz toyed affectionately with the stem of his glass filled with bright red liquid.
“Ach, the home-made wine—that is good! Well, it is like old times, Momma—when the older children, Lena and Fred was here, and Lilly was a little girl about Johnnie’s size. Yes, it was fine then. None of these rich people with big houses and all that. We was the bosses then.”
“We had all the land,” put in Mrs. Dietz gloomily. “We could get enough off of it to sell a good crop every year and plenty of vegetables to the commission men, and you always had money, if you needed it for anything, like Molly dying. Now it’s in the bank and we can’t spend nothing. No, the land was better than the money.”
“Mr. Blaydon, he gives me sixty dollars a month, and all the feed for the stock, and half the money from the truck. That is something, sixty dollars sure every month.”