"You see, child, I should be glad to give a finger of my right hand if I could go up there one day a week in order to arrange things for the master as they should be and fix the garden and the vegetables.

The stuff the old soldier is giving him to eat is perfectly horrid, I know." Maezli hated to hear complaints, so she always looked for a remedy.
"You don't need to be so unhappy," she said.

"Just cook some nice milk-pudding for him and I'll take it up to him.

Then he'll have something good to eat, something much better than vegetables; oh, yes, a thousand times better." "You little innocent! Oh, when I think of forty years ago!" Apollonie cried out, but she complained no further.

Maezli's answers had clearly given her the conviction that the child could not possibly understand the difficult situation she was in.
Maezli chattered gaily by Apollonie's side, and as soon as she reached home, wanted to tell her mother what had happened.