"
She felt so warm with joy, that she was obliged to take the handkerchief
from her face.
It was a strange day in the house. Rose repeated half-angrily the
peculiar questions that John had asked her. Barefoot rejoiced inwardly;
for all that he wanted to know--and she knew well why he wanted to know
it--could have been satisfactorily answered by her.
"But what good does it all do?" she asked herself. "He does not know
you, and even if he did know you, you are a poor orphan and a servant,
and nothing could ever come of it. He does not know you, and will not
ask about you."
In the evening, when the two men came back, Barefoot had already been
able to remove the handkerchief from her forehead; but the one she had
tied over her temples and under her chin, she was obliged to keep on
still, drawn tightly around her face. John himself seemed to have
neither tongue nor eyes for her. But his dog was with her in the kitchen
all the time, and she fed the creature and stroked it and talked to it.
"Yes, if you could only tell him everything, you would be sure to tell
him the whole truth." The dog laid its head on Barefoot's lap, and
looked up at her with intelligent eyes; then he seemed to shake his
head, as if to say: "It is too bad, but unfortunately I cannot speak."
Barefoot now went into the bed-room and began singing to the children
again, although they had long been asleep; she sang various songs, but
most of all the waltz to which she had danced with John.
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