“They must be all asleep in there,” fretted Grandma Padgett. The woman with her arms over the half door had not stirred.
“Yes, and ask if Zene stopped here. I don't see a sign of the wagon.”
Her grandson opened the carriage door and ran down the steps. The white-scrubbed hall detained him several minutes before he returned with a large man who smoked a crooked-stemmed pipe during the conference. The man held the bowl of the pipe in his hand which was fat and red. So was his face. He had a mighty tuft of hair on his upper lip. His shirt sleeves shone like new snow through the dark.
“I want to stop here over night,” said Grandma Padgett. “We're moving, and our wagon is somewhere on this road. Have you seen anything of a wagon--and a white and a gray horse?”
“Oh, yes,” said the tavern keeper, nodding his head. “Dere is lots of wakkons on de road aheadt.”
“Well, we can't go further ourselves. Can you take the lines?”
“Oh, nein,” said the tavern-keeper mildly. “I don't keep moofers mit my house. Dey goes a little furter.”
“You don't keep movers!” said Grandma Padgett indignantly. “What's your tavern for?”
“Oh, yah,” replied the host with undisturbed benevolence. “Dey goes a little furter.”
“Why have you put out a sign to mislead folks?”
The tavern keeper took the pipe out of his mouth to look up at his sign. It swayed back and forth in the valley breeze, as if itself expostulating with him.
“Dot's a goot sign,” he pronounced. “Auf you go up te hill, tere ist te house I put up mit te moofers. First house. All convenient. You sthay tere. I coom along in te mornin'. Tere ist more as feefty famblies sthop mit tat house. Oh, nien, I don't keep moofers mit te tafern.”
“This is a queer way to do,” said Grandma Padgett, fixing the full severity of her glasses on him. “Turn a woman and two children away to harbor as well as they can in some old barn! I'll not stop in your house on the hill. Who'd 'tend to the horses?”
“Tare ist grass and water,” said the landlord as she turned from his door. “And more as feefty famblies hast put up tere. I don't keep moofers mit te tafern.”
Robert and Corinne felt very homeless as she drove at a rattling pace down the valley. They were hungry, and upon an unknown road; and that inhospitable tavern had turned them away like vagrants.