When Lena passed that on, excitement reigned, and German questions were hurled at me!  I think the three girls were ready to leave home!  I gently reminded them of the war and the complications it had caused in the matter of travelling.  They threw out their hands with a gesture of despair—­there could be no Canada for them.  “Fertig,” they said—­which is the word they use to mean “no chance,” “no use to try further.”

Lena, however, having travelled as far as Sweden, and knowing, therefore, something of the world’s ways, was not altogether without hope.

“The war—­will be some day done!” she said—­and we let it go at that.

Lena began to teach me German, and used current events as the basis of instruction.  Before the end of the first day I was handling sentences like this—­“Herr Schmidt expects to have his young child christened in the church next Sunday at 2 o’clock, God willing.”

Helene Romisch, the daughter of the house, had a mania for knowing every one’s age, and put the question to me in the first ten minutes of our acquaintance.  She had evidently remembered every answer she had ever received to her questions, for she told me the age of every one who passed by on the road, and when there was no one passing she gave me a list of the family connections of those who had gone, or those who were likely to go, with full details as to birthdays.

I think it was Eliza, the other girl, who could speak no English and had to use Lena as interpreter, who first broached the tender subject of matrimony.

Was I married?

I said, “No.”

Then, after a few minutes’ conference—­

Had I a girl?

“No—­I hadn’t,” I told them.

Then came a long and heated discussion, and Lena was hard put to it, with her scanty store of English words, and my recently acquired German, to frame such a delicate question.  I thought I knew what it was going to be—­but I did not raise a hand to help.

Why hadn’t I a girl?  Did I not like girls? or what?

I said I did like girls; that was not the reason.  Then all three talked at once, and I knew a further explanation was going to be demanded if Lena’s English could frame it.  This is the form in which the question came: 

“You have no girl, but you say you like girls; isn’t it all right to have a girl?”

Then I told them it was quite a proper thing to have a girl; I had no objections at all; in fact, I might some day have a girl myself.

Then Lena opened her heart, seeing that I was not a woman-hater, and told me she had a beau in Sweden; but I gathered from her manner of telling it that his intentions were somewhat vague yet.  Eliza had already admitted that she had a “fellow,” and had shown me his picture.  Helene made a bluff at having one, too, though she did not seem able to give names or dates.  Then Lena, being the spokeswoman, told me she could get a girl for me, and that the young lady was going to come out to the potato digging.  “She see you carry water—­she like you,” declared Lena.  This was interesting, too, and I remembered that when I was carrying water from the town pump the first day I was there, I had seen a black-eyed young lady of about sixteen standing in the road, and when I passed she had bade me “Good-day” in splendid English.