“But what’s the matter, Ghitza, you are not eating?” he heard his mistress saying. “Or are you waiting to be invited? Dear, dear, perhaps I ought to beg the gentleman to come to table!”
The apprentice, accustomed to the mistress’s ways, took a chair. But he had not swallowed three mouthfuls before the mistress bade him call in “that ne’er-do-well out there.”
Sandu shyly wished them good day, but of all those sitting round the table he only saw the master, and by his side the mistress, whose eyes seemed to scorch him and make him lose his presence of mind.
“What is your name?” the master asked him.
“I am called Sandu Boldurean.”
And in a low voice he told where he was born, with whom he had learnt the trade, and how long he had worked, but during the questioning he scarcely raised his eyelids. He grew confused at once when the mistress screamed at him:
“But you’ll ruin your hat turning it round like that in your hands. Put it down somewhere and speak up so that a man can understand what you are saying.”
Sandu felt the blood go to his head, and hardly knowing what he was doing he hung his hat on a bolt on the door.
“And you worked only with one master?”
“Only one. See, here is my work-book,” and with some haste he drew out the handkerchief, unknotted it, and held out his “work-book” to the master.