Trudi did not at all regard the verbal sketch of P. Blinders as a correct one, but though her love was blind to his pimples and ignored his stumpiness, she could not deny the spectacles, which were to her as peepholes affording visions of a blissful married future.
"He is a Herr who brought me news from my Mutti at home in Germany. She is sick, and my father also, and all my little brothers and sisters are sick too," gulped Trudi, sobbing and wallowing and rasping her flushed features against the knobbly counterpane of the most uncomfortable of the two beds, "because they hear that I am in this place, and they so greatly fear that I will be dead."
"You aren't dead yet. And you told me when I engaged you that you were an orphan brought up by an aunt."
"Pay me my vage," demanded Trudi, lifting a defiant and perfectly dry countenance, and launching the utterance in the forbidden English language, "and I vill now go. I vish not to stop here longer."
"Very well, but where are you going?"
"That," remarked Trudi, tossing her elaborately-dressed head and relapsing into her native language, "has nothing to do with the gracious lady."
There was insolent triumph and unveiled spite in the large face attached to the elaborate coiffure. The gracious lady, realising that Trudi formed the one link between herself and the rough, strange, suspicious, unfriendly male world outside, pocketed her pride to temporise. Let Trudi remain as companion and attendant to the German refugee-widow yet another week, and the month's due of wages, already trebled in virtue of a service involving risk, should be substantially increased.... But Trudi only snorted and shook her head, and Lady Hannah found herself confronting not only a rat determined upon abandoning a sinking ship, but malignantly inclined to hasten the vessel's foundering.
What was to be done? It is quite possible to be brave, adventurous, and daring without a revolver, its absence may even impart a faint sense of relief to one, as being no longer under the necessity of shooting somebody with it at a pinch, but without boots or shoes, and a Trudi to put them on, Lady Hannah found herself at a nonplus. To conceal the fact from the rejoicing Trudi, she moved to the window and drew the blind aside, and was instantly confronted with a row of round, staring eyes, the nose belonging to each pair being flattened eagerly against the glass.
"Oh!" exclaimed Lady Hannah, dropping the blind in consternation at this manifestation of public interest. A snorting chuckle from the malignant Trudi fanned the little lady's waning courage into flame. She crossed the room and turned the door-handle.
The door was locked from the outside, the key having been removed to accommodate the eye of Mevrouw Kink, who reluctantly removed it to unlock the door, and announce that Myjnheer Van Busch had asked to see his sister, as she ushered the visitor in.