XIV

hears everywhere. And now, go away, go to your young woman, I can see you’re in a hurry. You needn’t be afraid that we’ll come, I only said it at first for fun, out of mischief. But you can come often enough to see us, there’s nothing to hinder you, you can always plead Barnabas’s messages as an excuse. I’ll make it easier for you by telling you that Barnabas, even if he has a message from the Castle for you, can’t go all the way up to the school to find you. He can’t trail about so much, poor boy, he wears himself out in the service, you’ll have to come yourself to get the news.” K. had never before heard Amalia utter so many consecutive sentences, and they sounded differently from her usual comments, they had a kind of dignity which obviously impressed not only K. but Olga too, although she was accustomed to her sister. She stood a little to one side, her arms folded, in her usual stolid and somewhat stooping posture once more, with her eyes fixed on Amalia, who on the other hand looked only at K. “It’s an error,” said K. , “a gross error to imagine that I’m not in earnest in looking for Barnabas, it’s my most urgent wish, really my only wish, to get my business with the authorities properly settled. And Barnabas has to help me in that, most of my hopes are based on him. I grant he has disappointed me greatly once as it is, but that was more my fault than his; in the bewilderment of my first hours in the village I believed that everything could be settled by a short walk in the evening, and when the impossible proved impossible I blamed him for it. That influenced me even in my opinion of your family and of you. But that is all past, I think I understand you better now, you are even⁠—” K. tried to think of the exact word, but could not find it immediately, so contented himself with a makeshift⁠—“You seem to be the most good-natured people in the village so far as my experience goes. But now, Amalia, you’re putting me off the track again by your depreciation⁠—if not of your brother’s service⁠—then of the importance he has for me. Perhaps you aren’t acquainted with his affairs, in which case it doesn’t matter, but perhaps you are acquainted with them⁠—and that’s the impression I incline to have⁠—in which case it’s a bad thing, for that would indicate