"Does it please you?" asked the man, after Sami had looked on attentively for some time. The boy answered by nodding his head.
"Are you French, that you can't talk?" asked the man again.
Sami then said he could talk, but not at all in French, but he was glad that the tinker spoke German, because otherwise he would not be able to understand anyone there.
"Whom do you belong to?" asked the man again.
Then the man wanted to know where he had come from and why he had come among the French. Sami told him his history, and how he had only come there again that morning.
"And now don't you know at all what you are going to do, and where you are going?" asked the man.
"If I knew that you would do something, and not just stand around and look in the air, I would give you work," continued the man, "but such stray waifs as you are not willing to do anything."
Meanwhile a woman had come from the wagon. She had heard her husband's last words.
"Take him," she said. "What work is there for him? He might run errands; all boys can do that. I never get through with the running about and the four bawlers, and the cooking besides; take him!"
"Well, stay here," said the man; "you can carry the pan back; it is very good that you know the way."
Sami had suddenly found a place; he did not himself know how, but he was very glad about it. Quite content, he started out with his pan and did exactly as the tinker had told him. He wandered through the long street of La Tour, went into every house and showed his mended pan. He made significant gestures, to make the people understand that he would like to get more articles to mend. This he did so eagerly and earnestly that most of the people burst out laughing, and this put them in such good humor that they always found a pan or a kettle with a hole in it which they handed him to be repaired.
Thus in a short time Sami had collected as much old stuff as he was able to carry, and could now take his pan to the house pointed out to him, where it belonged. Then he turned back.
[Illustration: "Such stray waifs as you are not willing ta do anything."]
The tinker was very much pleased with Sami's harvest and his wife said very kindly, if he kept on doing like that, he would get along all right, but he must sit down at once and have some supper. The four little children were no longer there. Sami guessed that they were lying out in the wagon asleep. On the fire a pot was now standing. It was bubbling merrily inside and from under the cover came forth a very inviting odor. Sami had never been so hungry in his life before, for he had had nothing the whole day but the rest of the piece of bread which the driver had given him the day before in Château d'Æux.