'What can we do? we have no horses and my father cannot walk on his own feet.'
'Is your father lame?'
'Yes.'
The peasant reflected for a moment.
'Then he is hanging on to the others, as it were?'
'Oh no,' replied the girl with much spirit, 'father teaches the children and I take in sewing, and when there is no sewing to do I work in the fields.'
Slimak looked at her with surprise and said, after a pause: 'You can't be German, you talk our language very well.'
'We are from Germany.'
'Yes, we are Germans,' said the man in the cart, speaking for the first time.
Slimakowa and Jendrek now came out of the cottage and joined the group at the gate.