“It is hard work, but I don’t think I’ve ever had such a satisfied feeling, even with my arms and legs so tired, in all my life.”

“You are right,” returned the baron. “It is a satisfying life, like no other. But now we have to make sure we get all the day’s grain and straw under the roofs before the rain.”

“What about the Mähdrescher, Papa?”

“I’ll come back for it. I never miss a chance to ride back on top of a wagon piled high with straw. It’s the best part of the whole harvest!”

Laughing and talking together, they continued on back to the house.

52 Old Eppie's Tale

52

Old Eppie’s Tale

Later that evening, though weariness from the day’s work was keenly felt in the muscles of more than one of the bathed and scrubbed bodies present, the baron and his wife and daughter gathered with their visitors in the guest parlor. With them was the most special guest of all, the servant who had lived at Lebenshaus nearly longer than the baron’s and his wife’s ages put together. She was known affectionately to family and staff simply as Old Eppie. Hearing that foreigners were in the house, and having received a personal invitation from the baron to join them for tea and cakes in the evening, her eyes were already aglow, and both Heinrich and Marion knew it would take very little prodding for tales out of the past to begin flowing from her ancient tongue.

The atmosphere for the occasion was rendered all the more suitable in that the black clouds from the afternoon had continued to approach, engulfing the entire north of Germany by the onset of evening, threatening severe thundershowers certainly before morning, possibly by midnight.

Once they were all seated and suitably introduced, Marion and Sabina served small plates of cakes and tea.

“We’ve told our guests, Eppie,” said the baron, “that you’ve lived here longer than any man or woman alive.”

“Longer than any man or woman should be alive!” rejoined Eppie in a shrill tone that was followed by a cackling laugh. “But you’ve been good to me, Baron,” she added. “Though you could have put me away years ago, you keep me like I was family, just like you did my mother before me.”

“You are family, Eppie,” laughed the baron. “But I’m afraid it was my grandfather who saw to your mother, not me.”

A brief look of question passed over the grizzled countenance.

“You didn’t know my mother, then, Baron?”

“No, Eppie. She may have known me, but I’m sorry to say I did not have the pleasure. She died when I was five, I think it was.”