"Does she like birds?" asked Hauke; "I thought only cats were for her."
Elke shook her head: "Why, she raises ducks and sells them; but last spring, when you had killed her Angora cat, the rats got into the pen at the back of the house and made mischief; now she wants to build herself another in front of the house."
"Is that so?" said Hauke and whistled low through his teeth, "that's why she dragged mud and stones from the upper land. But then she will get on to the inland road; has she a grant?"
"I don't know," said Elke. But he had spoken the last word so loud that the dikemaster started out of his slumber.
"What grant?" he asked and looked almost wildly from one to the other. "What about the grant?"
But when Hauke had explained the matter to him, he slapped the young man's shoulder, laughing: "Oh, well, the inland road is broad enough; God help the dikemaster if he has to worry about duck pens!"
It weighed on Hauke's heart that he should have delivered the old woman and her ducks over to the rats, but he allowed himself to be quieted by this objection. "But, master," he began again, "it might be good for some people to be prodded a little, and if you don't want to go after them yourself, why don't you prod the overseers who ought to look out for order on the dike?"
"How--what is the boy saying?" and the dikemaster sat up straight, and Elke let her fancy stocking sink down and turned an ear toward Hauke.
"Yes, master," Hauke went on, "you have already gone round on your spring inspection; but just the same Peter Jansen hasn't weeded his lot to this day; and in summer the goldfinches will play round the red thistles as gaily as ever. And near by--I don't know to whom it belongs--there is a hole like a cradle on the outer side of the dike; when the weather is good it is always full of little children that roll in it; but--God save us from high water!"
The eyes of the old dikemaster had grown bigger and bigger.