In the evening there assembled at the “Sun” the “permanent company”—the ex-burgomaster Kormann of Haffert, the surveyor Hommels, Spinwek the baker, and one or two other gentlemen from the town, who would sit playing at cards, sometimes till eleven, and frequently asked the landlord to take a hand.
Besides the field, the carpenter’s trade, the toll-gate, and the usual custom of the inn, there was another great annual source of income, the Haffert kermis (fair) at St Rochustide in August, when the burghers with their wives and daughters, and the young men from the city, streamed to the village for three days following. And the man who did not put up at the “Sun” had not been at the Haffert kermis.
If on these occasions Knoups did not, taking one day with another, tap his six casks of beer per day, he had every reason to shake his head, pass his thumb over his forefinger as though he had been counting money, drop his under-lip, and sigh:
“It’s bad times with people, ... they’re short of money.”
“Knoups,” Hommels had sometimes said to him, “you ought to have dance-music at St Rochus. Then you might tap ten casks in a day, or even twelve.”
Knoups looked serious, pulled somewhat harder at his pipe, considered for a moment, and replied:
“Thirty casks! ... it would be a good deal.”
Next year, having used up twenty casks in the three days, he said to Geutruu:
“Wife, we must have the dancing next year.”
“You know best, I suppose,” said Geutruu; “every cask counts. But what will the Pastoor say?”
“Well, every one ought to know what he’s about, and I have to think of the children.”
“THEIR EVENING GLASS OF BEER AT THE ‘SUN.’” ]
Next year there was music and dancing at the “Sun,” and some forty-two casks of beer were tapped.
Knoups and Geutruu laughed in their sleeves.
All the same, it had been a frightful moment for them, when they sat side by side at early mass, and the Curé had preached against dancing, and hinted at the risks run as regards the next world by those who took part in such amusements. Geutruu did not know where to hide her head for shame, and kept bending lower and lower over her prayer-book. Mathis cast a furious glance at the preacher, but the latter stared at the couple till the whole congregation had turned their eyes in their direction; and Mathis himself at last, fiery red at one moment and deadly pale the next, cast down his eyes and bowed his head.