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Updated: May 4, 2025
Answer him in three words if you can. Then come out quietly. If he calls, you may go back." Alberdina laid aside her comedy hat and followed the doctor into the sick room. The others gathered noiselessly outside the window and listened. There was a long silence. Then the man on the bed spoke in a low, weak voice. It was only a mumble of sounds to Billie and Richard, but Mr.
Campbell understood German and listened intently. Alberdina replied not in three words but in a long voluble speech. They held their breath. "Come out," called the doctor softly. The sick man had begun to speak again. He seemed to be giving orders. At the door Phoebe was weeping softly. Her father, restored to himself, was a stranger who spoke in a foreign tongue.
From the doorway, Billie could see the silver candlesticks on the mantel shelf. Mrs. Lupo had kept them brightly polished and they lent a strange charm and refinement to the bare apartment. Phoebe crept in and knelt outside her father's door. "Now, Alberdina," said the doctor as a last caution, "you understand that you are not to speak unless the gentleman inside asks you a question in German.
"It would go hard with me," pursued Richard, "if I got a blow on the head over my English-language bump, because I wouldn't have any other to take its place." Having arranged the history of the sick man to their own satisfaction, and as a matter of fact, to the doctor's and Mr. Campbell's also, they returned to Sunrise Camp, leaving Alberdina and Phoebe behind them.
"They're mighty good," said the doctor. "Experimenting cooks generally have a sub-conscious instinct that carries them along when they seem to be going blindly. But it's difficult to work with them. They are always dictatorial and inclined to treat the assistant as a scullery maid." Billie groaned. "I hope Alberdina, strong and fearless, will relieve us of that awful scullery work.
This house was attacked and broken into by a dozen ruffians and if it hadn't been for Alberdina, there, who has the mind of a general and knew exactly how to build a barricade with trunks, Phoebe would certainly have been tarred and feathered, even before Mr. Hook came to our rescue " "He heard my bugle," announced Elinor. "I wished for him," thought Billie.
Most of the party scattered for naps and letter writing and did not meet again until sunset. That afternoon as they gathered around the supper table, Alberdina brought a note to Miss Campbell, written in a strange, old-fashioned handwriting on a scrap of paper. It read: "Do not be uneasy. I have gone in search of Mr. Hook. Phoebe." Miss Campbell groaned as she read the message aloud.
Having been forgiven the pink clothes and having had her stolen money refunded, she went about her work, singing and yodelling in a melodious voice, and for lunch surprised them with a German cinnamon cake she had made during their absence in the village. "Why, you can cook, Alberdina?" exclaimed Billie, on whom cooking was beginning to pall. "I can a leedle coog."
Nearly an hour had passed when Alberdina awoke from her healthy, conscienceless slumber with a start. Turning her head lazily, she noticed that the clothes were boiling and the water was running over the sides of the boiler. "Mein Gott!" she said in German. "That little mistress will make of me the Hamburger. I must do some work."
Alberdina opened her eyes. "Helb! Helb! I asg you helb!" she called. The music stopped instantly and a man, tall, slender, with an indescribably distinguished air, approached, carrying the zither under his arm. "You called?" he asked courteously. Alberdina burst into a torrent of excited German. She rolled her prominent eyes to indicate her bonds.
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