“Please!” the girl piped up. “Please, we can work. We’ll do dishes, or the sweeping.”
Mrs. Snout peered closely at them. The little girl was wearing a coat that, although worn and threadbare in places, looked as though it might once have been expensive, and she was carrying a large, polished wooden box. Outside, it was gray and gloomy and dark. The streets were very still. “How did you get here?” Mrs. Snout asked suspiciously. “And where are you coming from?”
Again, the small, pale children exchanged glances. Mrs. Snout could not put her finger on it—no, she couldn’t say for certain—but she almost had the impression that both of them paused momentarily, as though listening to the wind.
And indeed, both Will and Liesl had been waiting while Po said, “I don’t see the harm in telling her.”
“We came from Cloverstown,” the boy said after a moment. “We came by, um, coach.”
“Then you must have some money,” Mrs. Snout said. “Coaches aren’t free.”
“We—we used it up,” the boy stuttered. He seemed to be growing desperate.
Mrs. Snout nodded to the box in the girl’s arms. “And what’s that, eh? You won’t pretend you’re carting around an empty jewelry box. What do you have? Out with it.” Behind her, something clattered to the floor: The black-haired man had dropped his spoon.
The girl clutched the box tightly to her chest. “Nothing!” she said emphatically. “There is nothing at all inside.”
“I cannot help you if you will not be honest with me.” Mrs. Snout again started to close the door.
“Please!” Will stuck his foot in the door just as Mrs. Snout was swinging it shut, to prevent it from closing all the way. He was exhausted and freezing; his clothes were damp; the long and bumpy ride in the cart had left his legs numb. “We’ll stay only one night. In the morning we head west, beyond the hills.”
“Maybe you know it,” Liesl put in eagerly. “We’re going to the Red House.”
The door, which was open only a small crack, barely enough to admit Will’s foot, swung open a little wider. Mrs. Snout’s mood shifted.
“The Red House, hmmm?” She looked Will and Liesl over more closely, and seemed to come to a decision. “Wait here.”
Then she disappeared into the house. Liesl got a quick view of an ugly, black-haired man staring intently at her from a room farther into the house before the door clicked shut in her face.
They waited. Po asked, “What’s taking her so long?” and flitted about impatiently, but neither Liesl nor Will had the energy to answer.
Then Mrs. Snout was back. She was carrying two hot potatoes wrapped in a tea towel.
“Here,” she said, passing the potatoes to Will, who felt tears of gratitude spring to his eyes. He had to blink them away quickly, so Liesl would not see. “I can’t let you have a room if you’ve got no money to pay. But the barn around back will be warm and dry. You can sleep there tonight.”
“Thank you,” Liesl said fervently. The smell of the potato made her stomach growl.
“Mmmm,” Mrs. Snout grunted. Again she watched them closely, through narrow eyes. “The walk to the Red House is long. Do you know the way?”
“I—I think I’ll remember,” Liesl said. Will thought she sounded uncertain.
“You will come to a green house after you’ve climbed the foothills,” Mrs. Snout said. “That is Evergreen Manor. You must stop there. Tell Mrs. Evergreen I sent you. She will give you food and water and point you in the right direction.”
Liesl would have hugged Mrs. Snout, except that Mrs. Snout did not seem like the kind of person who liked to be hugged. So instead she just said, “Thank you,” once again.
“Mmmm.” Mrs. Snout jerked her chin in the direction of the barn. “Now go on with you. It’s late and you should be sleeping.” And with that she shut the door again. This time Will and Liesl heard the latch sliding into place.
The black-haired man was not in the dining room when Mrs. Snout returned to it. He had left his bowl sitting in a small pool of spilled soup. She shook her head. No manners. Well, at least he had gone to bed. It made her distinctly uncomfortable to have him hanging around. His very presence gave her an itchy, evaluated feeling, as though every time he looked at her he was only trying to determine how much he could get for prying out her fillings and selling them, or chopping her body into neat cuts of meat for the butcher.
Mrs. Snout passed into the kitchen, where her half-blind assistant was squatting in the corner playing with a ball of string, like a cat.
“You,” Mrs. Snout said, and the boy scrambled to his feet. One eye blinked guiltily at her. The other was a mere hole, a bit of scratched skin. Mrs. Snout never got used to looking at it. Instead she focused on the tip of his nose.
“You are to take Benny”—that was the mule, a skinny, bad-tempered thing—“and ride at once to Evergreen Manor.”