“Very good, Master Knoups! the man who does not need that, is not called on to take any trouble about it!”
“Then don’t let him trouble himself with my affairs,” answered Knoups.
Master Knoups’ inn was about twenty minutes’ walk from the little town, at the point where the “grintweg” leading to Haffert branches off from the high-road. Among the other advantages of this situation was a toll-gate, which was farmed by Mathis. What Limburg carter would not willingly turn in for a half-pint of beer or a dram, at the place where he has to stop and pay “barrière”? Thus the “Sun” was always full of “coming and going folk.”
Knoups let his wife attend to the taproom and the toll-gate; he himself was all day long in his workshop, when not busy on his bit of land. Well, Geutruu (Gertrude) was a handy woman, who helped him to provide for the children, had a pleasant word for every one,—if there was a cent to be earned anyhow,—but who let no one steal the cheese off her bread.
“M. LE CURÉ.”
In the evening there assembled at the “Sun” the “permanent company”—the ex-burgomaster Kormann of Haffert, the surveyor Hommels, Spinwek the baker, and one or two other gentlemen from the town, who would sit playing at cards, sometimes till eleven, and frequently asked the landlord to take a hand.
Besides the field, the carpenter’s trade, the toll-gate, and the usual custom of the inn, there was another great annual source of income, the Haffert kermis (fair) at St Rochustide in August, when the burghers with their wives and daughters, and the young men from the city, streamed to the village for three days following. And the man who did not put up at the “Sun” had not been at the Haffert kermis.
If on these occasions Knoups did not, taking one day with another, tap his six casks of beer per day, he had every reason to shake his head, pass his thumb over his forefinger as though he had been counting money, drop his under-lip, and sigh:
“It’s bad times with people, ... they’re short of money.”