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.