Dangerous Days

In the early morning, winter and summer, he emerged into the small side

porch of his cottage and there threw over himself a pail of cold water

from the well outside. Then he rubbed down, dressed in the open air

behind the old awning hung there, took a dozen deep breaths and a cup of

coffee, and was off for work. The addition of a bathroom, with running

hot water, had made no change in his daily habits.

He was very strict with Anna, and with the women who, one after another,

kept house for him.

"I'll have no men lounging around," was his first instruction on

engaging them. And to Anna his solicitude took the form almost of

espionage. The only young man he tolerated about the place was a distant

relative. Rudolph Klein.

On Sunday evenings Rudolph came in to supper. But even Rudolph found it

hard to get a word with the girl alone.

"What's eating him, anyhow," he demanded of Anna one Sunday evening,

when by the accident of a neighbor calling old Herman to the gate, he

had the chance of a word.

"He knows a lot about you fellows," Anna had said. "And the more he

knows the less he trusts you. I don't wonder."

"He hasn't anything on me."

But Anna had come to the limit of her patience with her father at last.

"What's the matter with you?" she demanded angrily one night, when

Herman had sat with his pipe in his mouth, and had refused her

permission to go to the moving-pictures with another girl. "Do you think

I'm going on forever like this, without a chance to play? I'm sick of

it. That's all."

"You vill not run around with the girls on this hill." He had conquered

all but the English "w." He still pronounced it like a "v."

"What's the matter with the girls on this hill?" And when he smoked on

in imperturbable silence, she had flamed into a fury.

"This is free America," she reminded him. "It's not Germany. And I've

stood about all I can. I work all day, and I need a little fun. I'm

going."

And she had gone, rather shaky as to the knees, but with her head held

high, leaving him on the little veranda with his dead pipe in his

mouth and his German-American newspaper held before his face. She had

returned, still terrified, to find the house dark and the doors locked,

and rather than confess to any one, she had spent the night in a chair

out of doors.