“If you care to take a ride, John, that would be fine.  Then, Rose, you can sit with me in the Bernese chaise, and you, John, can ride alongside of us.”

“But your wife is going too, isn’t she?” inquired John, after a pause.

“I have a child to nurse, and cannot go away,” said the farmer’s wife.

“And I don’t like to be driving about the country on a working-day,” said Rose.

“Oh nonsense!  When a cousin comes, you may take a holiday,” urged the farmer; for he wanted Rose to go with him at once to Farmer Furche’s, that the latter might entertain no hopes for his own daughter.  Moreover he was aware that a little excursion of this kind does more to bring people together than a week’s visit in the house.

John was silent; and the farmer in his urgency nudged him, and said in a half-whisper: 

“Do you speak to her; maybe she will be more apt to do as you say, and will go with us.”

“I think,” said John aloud, “that your sister is quite right in preferring not to be driving about the country in the middle of the week.  I’ll harness my white horse with yours, and then we can see how they pull together.  And we shall be back by supper-time, if not before.”

Barefoot, who heard all this, bit her lips to keep from laughing.

“You see,” she thought to herself, “you have not even got him by the halter yet, much less by the bridle.  He won’t let himself be driven about the country like a betrothed man, and then not be able to get back.”

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.  John listened to her as if bewildered, and seemed to be absent-minded when he spoke.  Rose went into the room, and told Barefoot to be quiet.