“It is only afternoon now; if we are to be left here till morning we shall be starving.”
“I have here some good eatables,” said the woman tranquilly; “on my festival day it is natural that I should have provision with me. I have five good blood-sausages; in the town shops they cost twenty-five heller each. Things are dear in the town shops.”
“I will give you fifty heller apiece for a couple of them,” said Abbleway with some enthusiasm.
“In a railway accident things become very dear,” said the woman; “these blood-sausages are four kronen apiece.”
“Four kronen!” exclaimed Abbleway; “four kronen for a blood-sausage!”
“You cannot get them any cheaper on this train,” said the woman, with relentless logic, “because there aren’t any others to get. In Agram you can buy them cheaper, and in Paradise no doubt they will be given to us for nothing, but here they cost four kronen each. I have a small piece of Emmenthaler cheese and a honey-cake and a piece of bread that I can let you have. That will be another three kronen, eleven kronen in all. There is a piece of ham, but that I cannot let you have on my name-day.”
Abbleway wondered to himself what price she would have put on the ham, and hurried to pay her the eleven kronen before her emergency tariff expanded into a famine tariff. As he was taking possession of his modest store of eatables he suddenly heard a noise which set his heart thumping in a miserable fever of fear. ‘There was a scraping and shuffling as of some animal or animals trying to climb up to the footboard. In another moment, through the snow-encrusted glass of the carriage window, he saw a gaunt prick-eared head, with gaping jaw and lolling tongue and gleaming teeth; a second later another head shot up.
“There are hundreds of them,” whispered Abbleway; “they have scented us. They will tear the carriage to pieces. We shall be devoured.”
“Not me, on my name-day. The holy Mariä Kleophä would not permit it,” said the woman with provoking calm.
The heads dropped down from the window and an uncanny silence fell on the beleaguered carriage. Abbleway neither moved nor spoke. Perhaps the brutes had not clearly seen or winded the human occupants of the carriage, and had prowled away on some other errand of rapine.