“Well then,” said K. , “Hans’ family must have been very anxious to be connected with you?”
“It may be so,” said the landlady, “I don’t know. I’ve never bothered about it.”
“But it must have been so all the same,” said K. , “seeing that the family was ready to make such a sacrifice and to give the inn into your hands absolutely without security.”
“It wasn’t imprudent, as was proved later,” said the landlady. “I threw myself into the work, I was strong, I was the blacksmith’s daughter, I didn’t need maid or servant. I was everywhere, in the taproom, in the kitchen, in the stables, in the yard. I cooked so well that I even enticed some of the Herrenhof’s customers away. You’ve never been in the inn yet at lunchtime, you don’t know our day customers; at that time there were more of them, many of them have stopped coming since. And the consequence was that we were able not merely to pay the rent regularly, but that after a few years we bought the whole place