So Roswitha remained at home and, as Annie was sleeping, went over to chat with Mrs. Kruse. "Dear Mrs. Kruse," she said, "you were going to tell me about the Chinaman. Yesterday Johanna interrupted you. She always puts on such airs, and such a story would not interest her. But I believe there was, after all, something in it, I mean the story of the Chinaman and Thomsen's niece, if she was not his granddaughter."
Mrs. Kruse nodded.
Roswitha continued: "Either it was an unhappy love"—Mrs. Kruse nodded again—"or it may have been a happy one, and the Chinaman was simply unable to endure the sudden termination of it. For the Chinese are human, like the rest of us, and everything is doubtless the same with them as with us."
"Everything," assured Mrs. Kruse, who was about to corroborate it by her story, when her husband entered and said: "Mother, you might give me the bottle of leather varnish. I must have the harness shining when his Lordship comes home tomorrow. He sees everything, and even if he says nothing, one can tell that he has seen it all."
"I'll bring it out to you, Kruse," said Roswitha. "Your wife is just going to tell me something more; but it will soon be finished and then I'll come and bring it."
A few minutes later Roswitha came out into the yard with the bottle of varnish in her hand and stood by the harness which Kruse had just hung over the garden fence. "By George!" he said, as he took the bottle from her hand, "it will not do much good; it keeps drizzling all the time and the shine will come off. But I am one of those who think everything must be kept in order."
"Indeed it must. Besides, Kruse, that is good varnish, as I can see at a glance, and first-class varnish doesn't stay sticky very long, it must dry immediately. Even if it is foggy tomorrow, or dewy, it will be too late then to hurt it. But, I must say, that is a remarkable story about the Chinaman."
Kruse laughed. "It is nonsense, Roswitha. My wife, instead of paying attention to proper things, is always telling such tales, and when I go to put on a clean shirt there is a button off. It has been so ever since we came here. She always had just such stories in her head and the black hen besides. And the black hen doesn't even lay eggs. After all, what can she be expected to lay eggs out of? She never goes out, and such things as eggs can't come from mere cock-a-doodle-dooing. It is not to be expected of any hen."
"See here, Kruse, I am going to repeat that to your wife. I have always considered you a respectable man and now you say things like that about the cock-a-doodle-dooing. Men are always worse than we think. Really I ought to take this brush right now and paint a black moustache on your face."
"Well, Roswitha, one could put up with that from you," and Kruse, who was usually on his dignity, seemed about to change to a more flirting tone, when he suddenly caught sight of her Ladyship, who today came from the other side of the "Plantation" and just at this moment was passing along the garden fence.