Chapter 1

Herr Kreutzer was a mystery to his companions in the little London orchestra in which he played, and he kept his daughter, Anna, in such severe seclusion that they little more than knew that she existed and was beautiful. Not far from Soho Square, they lived, in that sort of British lodgings in which room-rental carries with it the privilege of using one hole in the basement-kitchen range on which to cook food thrice a day. To the people of the lodging-house the two were nearly as complete a mystery as to the people of the orchestra.

"Hi sye," the landlady confided to the slavey, M'riar, "that Dutch toff in the hattic, 'e's somethink in disguise!"

"My hye," exclaimed the slavey, who adored Herr Kreutzer and intensely worshiped Anna. She jumped back dramatically. "_Not bombs!_"

The neighborhood was used to linking thoughts of bombs with thoughts of foreigners whose hair hung low upon their shoulders as, beyond a doubt, Herr Kreutzer's did, so M'riar's guess was not absurd. England offers refuge to the nightmares of all Europe's political indigestion. Soho offers most of them their lodgings. For years M'riar had been vainly waiting, with delicious fear, for that terrific moment when she should discover a loaded bit of gas-pipe in some bed as she yanked off the covers. Now real drama seemed, at last, to be coming into her dull life. Somethink in disguise--Miss Anna's father! She hoped it was _not_ bombs, for bombs _might_ mean trouble for him. She resolved that should she see a bobby trying to get up into the attic she would pour a kettleful of boiling water on him.

The landlady relieved her, somewhat, by her comment of next moment. "'E's too mild fer bombs by 'arf," she said, with rich disgust. "Likelier 'e's drove away, than that 'e's one as wishes 'e could drive. _Hi_ sye, fer guess, that 'e's got titles, an' sech like, but's bean cashiered." (The landlady had had a son disgraced as officer of yeomanry and used a military term which, to her mind, meant exiled.) "'E's got that look abaht 'im of 'avin' bean fired hout."

"No fault o' 'is, then," said the slavey quickly, voicing her earnest partisanship without a moment's wait. She even looked at her employer with a belligerent eye.

"'E _doos_ pye reg'lar," the landlady admitted with an air which showed that she had more than once had tenants who did not.

"Judgin' from 'is manners an' kind 'eart 'e _might_ be _princes_," said the slavey, drawing in her breath exactly as she would if sucking a ripe orange.

"An' 'is darter might be princesses!" exclaimed the landlady with a sniff. Quite plainly she did not approve of the seclusion in which Herr Kreutzer kept his daughter. "Five years 'ave them two lived 'ere in this 'ere 'ouse, an' not five times 'as that there man let that there 'aughty miss stir hout halone!"

"'Ow 'eavingly!" sighed the maid, who never, in her life, had been cared for, at all, by anyone.

"'Ow fiddlesticks!" the landlady replied. "You'd think she might be waxworks, liable to melt if sun-shone-on! Fer _me_, _Hi_ says that them as is too fine for Soho houghtn't to be _livin'_ 'ere. That's w'at _Hi_ says--halthough 'e pyes as reg'lar as clockworks."

"Clockworks fawther with a waxworks darter!" cried the slavey, who had a taste for humor of a kind. "Th' one 'ud stop if t'other melted. _That's_ sure."

"'E hidolizes 'er that much hit mykes me think o' Roman Catholics an' such," the landlady replied.

Then, for a time, she paused in thought, while the slavey lost herself in dreams that, possibly, she had been serving and been worshiping a real princess. As the height of the ambition of all such as she, in London, is to be humble before rank, the mere thought filled her with delight and multiplied into the homage of a subject for an over-lord the love she felt already for the charming German girl of whom they spoke.

"She _might_ be," said the landlady, at length.

"W'at? Princesses?" inquired the wistful slavey.

The landlady looked shrewdly at her. It might be that by thus confiding to the servant her own speculations as to her lodgers' rank, she had been sowing seed of some extravagance. Hypnotized by the idea, the slavey might slip to the two mysterious Germans, sometime, something which would not be charged upon the bill! "Nothink of the sort!" she cried, therefore, hastily. "An' don't you never tyke no coals to 'em that you don't tell abaht--you 'ear?"

The slavey promised, but the seed was sown. From that time on full many a small attention fell to the Herr Kreutzer and his pretty, gentle-mannered, dark-haired, big-eyed Anna of which the landlady knew nothing, and many a dream of romance did the smutted slavey's small, sad eyes see in the kitchen fire on lonely evenings while she was waiting for the last lodger to come in before she went to bed behind the kindlings-bin. And the central figures of these dreams were, always, the beautiful young German girl and her dignified, independent, shabby, courteous old father.

In the small orchestra where Kreutzer played, he made no friends among the other musical performers; when the manager of the dingy little theatre politely tried to pump him as to details of his history he managed to evade all answers in the least illuminating, although he never failed to do so with complete politeness.

All that really was known of him was that he had arrived in London, years ago, with only two possessions which he seemed to value, and, indeed, but two which were worth valuing. One of these, of course, was his exquisite young daughter, then a little child; the other was his wonderful old flute. The daughter he secluded with the jealous care of a far-eastern parent; the flute he played upon with an artistic skill unequalled in the history of orchestras in that small theatre.

With it he could easily have found a place in the best orchestra in London, but, apparently, he did not care to offer such a band his services. On the one or two occasions when a "cruising listener" for the big orchestras came to the little theatre, heard the old man's masterful performance, found himself enthralled by it and made the marvelous flute-player a rich offer, the old man refused peremptorily even to talk the matter over with him--to the great delight of the small manager, who was paying but a pittance for his splendid work.

So anxious did Herr Kreutzer seem to be to keep from winning notice from the outside world, indeed, that when a stranger who might possibly be one of those explorers after merit in dim places appeared there in the little theatre, the other members of the orchestra felt quite sure of wretched playing from the grey-haired flutist. If it chanced that they had noticed no such stranger, but yet Herr Kreutzer struck false notes persistently, they all made sure that they had missed the entrance of the "cruiser," searched the audience for him with keen and speculative eyes and played their very best, certain that the man was there and hopeful of attracting the attention and the approbation which the old flute-player shunned. More than one had thus been warned, to their great good.

And Herr Kreutzer, on such evenings, was privileged to strike false notes with painful iteration, even to the actual distress of auditors, without a word of criticism from the leader or the manager. Excruciating discord from the flute, on three or four nights of a season, was accepted as part payment for such playing, upon every other night, as seldom had been heard from any flute in any orchestra in London or elsewhere.

The theatre saw very little of the daughter. Once at the beginning of the run of every fit new play, the flute-player requested of the manager a box and always got it. In this box, on such occasions, his daughter sat in solitary state, enjoying with a childish fervor the mumming of the actors on the stage, the story of the play, the music of the orchestra. Such glimpses, only, had the theatre of her. Her father never introduced her to an attache of the establishment. Once, after she had grown into magnificent young womanhood, he very angrily refused an earnest supplication for an introduction from the manager, himself. On the nights when she came to the theatre he took her to the box, before the overture began, and she sat there, quite alone, until he went to her after the audience had been "played out."

His own exclusiveness was very nearly as complete. He formed no intimacies among the members of the orchestra with whom he played eight times a week, although his face showed, sometimes, that he yearned to join their gossip, in the stuffy little room beneath the stage, which housed them when they were not in their places in the crowded space "in front" allotted to them.

"_Tiens!_" said the Frenchman who played second-violin. "Ze ol' man have such fear zat we should wiss to spik us wiz 'is daughtaire, zat 'e trit us lak we 'ave a seeckness catchable!"

It was almost true. He did avoid the chance of making her acquainted with any of the folk with whom his daily routine threw him into contact, with a care which might suggest a fear of some sort of contagion for her. But not all the members of the orchestra resented it. The drummer (who also played the triangle and tambourine when need was, imitated railway noises with shrewd implements, pumped an auto-horn when motor-cars were supposed to be approaching or departing "off-stage" and made himself, in general, a useful man on all occasions) was his firm friend and partisan.

"Garn, Frawgs!" he sneered, to the resentful Frenchman. "Yer 'yn't fit ter sye ther time o' dye ter 'er; yer knows yer 'yn't."

"Wat? To ze daughtaire of a flute!" the Second-Violin replied. "W'y--"

"Garn!" said the drummer. "Sye, yer myke me sick! You, with yer black-'aired fyce an' paytent boots! Hi bean 'ammerin' 'ide in horchestras since me tenth birthdye, but Hi knows a hangel w'en Hi sees one, an' lawst night Hi missed a 'ole bar on the snare fer lookin' up at 'er just once. Hi never see a brunette look so habsolutely hinnocent. Th' Ol' Nick's peekin' out o' brunettes' faces, somew'eres, mostly. Don't know w'at she myde me think of--m'ybe wreaths o' roses red an' pink, an' m'ybe crowns o' di'mun's--but Hi missed a 'ole bar on th' snare fer thinking somethink."

"_Tiens!_" the Frenchman began scornfully. "He is too much--"

"Garn!" said the drummer, threateningly, and it may be that the tinkle of the "ready" bell prevented something more than words between them, for the drummer, at the time, was holding the bass-drum-stick. He could have struck a mighty blow with it.

Just when the thought of leaving for America first began to grow in Kreutzer's mind, it would be hard to say, but it took definite form immediately subsequent to the London visit of a Most Exalted Personage from Prussia. On the last day of this Most Exalted Personage's stay Herr Kreutzer was enjoying, with his Anna, the long Sunday twilight in Hyde Park. They often strolled there of a Sunday evening. The Most Exalted Personage, being in a democratic mood and wishful of seeing London and its people quietly, was also strolling in Hyde Park and met the father and the daughter, face to face.

There was nothing, so far as Anna saw, about the stranger in plain _mufti_, to make her father drop his head, pull down his hat and hurry on, almost as if in sudden panic, dragging her by a slender wrist clasped in a hand which trembled; but he did do all these things, while the queer gentleman with the upturned moustaches (Anna had no notion who he was) stopped stonestill in his stroll and gazed after them with puzzled eyes in which a semi-recognition and a very lively curiosity seemed growing.

"Who is he, father?" Anna asked, in English, which the father much preferred to German from her lips and which she spoke with carefully exact construction, but with charming rolling of the r's and hissing of the s's. Her accent was much more pronounced than his, due, doubtless, to the fact that while he went daily to his little corner of the English world to earn their living, her seclusion was complete. She saw few English save M'riar and the landlady--whose accent never tempted her to imitation. "He seemed to know you," she went on. "He seemed to wish, almost, to speak with you, but seemed to feel not positive that you _were_ you."

Kreutzer gave her a quick glance, then seemed to pull himself together with an effort. He assumed a carefully surprised air. "Who is he? Who is who, mine liebschen?"

"The gentleman from whom you ran away?"

"I run!" said Kreutzer, doubling his demeanor of astonishment as if in total ignorance of what she meant. "I run! Why should I run, my Anna? Why should I run from anybody?"

The daughter looked at him and sighed and then she looked at him and smiled, and said no more. So many times, in other days, had things like this occurred; so many times had she been quite unable to get any lucid exposition from him of the strange occurrences, that, lately, she never probed him for an explanation. She well knew, in advance, that she would get none, and was unwilling to compel him into laboring evasions. But such matters sorely puzzled her.

She did not learn, therefore, that the tall and handsome man who had so curiously stared at them was the Exalted Personage; she did not learn why it had been that from him Kreutzer had fled swiftly with her, obviously worrying intensely lest they might be followed. She did not know why, later, she was in closer espionage than ever. Two or three days afterwards, when Kreutzer came in with his pockets full of steamship time-tables and emigration-agents' folders, she did not dream that it was that the Most Exalted Personage had cast his eyes upon them, rather than the fact that wonderful advantages were promised to the emigrant by all this steamship literature, which had made him make a wholly unexpected plan to go from London and to cross the mighty sea. He swore her to close secrecy.

It was with the utmost difficulty that she concealed their destination from the landlady and from the slavey who assisted her in packing the small trunks which held their all. She was always glad of anything which made it absolutely necessary for them to be with her, for her father, long ago, had told her not to ask them into their small rooms when their presence there was not imperatively needed. She was and had been, ever since she could remember clearly, very lonely, full of longing for companionship--so very full of longing that, had he not commanded it, she would not have been, as he was, particular about the social status of the friends she made.

Even poor M'riar's love was very sweet and dear to her, and now, as she was packing for departure the meagre garments of her wardrobe, her scanty little fineries, the few small keepsakes she had hoarded of the pitifully scarce bright days of her life (almost every one of these a gift from her old father, token of a birth-or feast-day) it was with a sudden burst of tears, a rushing, overwhelming feeling of anticipatory loneliness, that she looked at the grimy little child who was assisting her.

M'riar fell back on her haunches with a gasp. "Garn!" she cried. "Garn, Miss! Don't yer dare to beller!"

A stranger might have thought she was impertinent, for "garn" on cockney lips means "go on, now," in the slang of the United States, and "beller" is not elegant, but Anna knew that she did not intend an impudence.

"I feel very sad at leaving you, M'ri-arrr." There was pathos, now, in the way Miss Anna rolled her r's.

"Sad! Huh! Hi thinks Hi'll die of it!" was the reply, accompanied by more choked sobs and many snuffles. "An' yer won't heven tell me w'ere yer hoff to!"

"I don't know, exactly, where we're off to M'ri-arrr. Somewhere very far--oh, very far!"

M'riar, in spite of a firm resolution not to yield to tears, cast herself upon the floor in anguish, and, as she kicked and howled, grasped one of Anna's hands and kissed it, mumbling it, as an anguished mother might a babe's--the hand of an exceedingly loved babe whom she expected, soon, to lose by having given it to someone in adoption.

At that time M'riar looked upon the separation as inevitable. The wild scheme which, afterwards, grew in her alert and worried brain, had not yet had its birth and she could not take the thought of her Miss Anna's going with composure.

"Hi didn't want ter 'oller," she said, at length, when she had regained her self-control, "but that there yell hinside o' me was bigger'n Hi 'ad room fer, Miss."

"It is very sweet of you to weep," said Anna gravely, "although it is not sweet to _hear_ you weep; but I think it means you love me, M'ri-arrr, doesn't it?"

"Hi fair wusships yer," said M'riar. "Fair wusships yer."

And there was a strange thing about Miss Anna. It did not in the least surprise her to be told with an undoubted earnestness, indeed to know, that she was literally worshiped as a goddess might be. There was something in her blood which made this seem quite right and proper. She looked at the poor slavey with the kind eyes of a princess gazing at a weeping subject, whose suffering has come through loyalty, and kindly smiled.

"It is very nice of you, M'riarr. I am fond of you, M'riarr."

"I knows yer is; I knows yer is," said M'riar. "Tyke me with yer, won't yer, Miss?"

"Oh, I couldn't take you with me," Anna answered, as she laid a kind, if queenly hand upon the poor thing's cheek. "But you must let me know just where you are at all times, and, perhaps, some day, I will send you something to remind you of me."

"Hi won't need nothink ter remind me, Miss," said M'riar. "Hi'll remember yer, hall right."

The next morning came a four-wheeled cab up to the dingy door, to the vast amazement of the other lodgers, and, indeed, the entire neighborhood. Into this Herr Kreutzer handed his delightful daughter with as much consideration as a minister could show a queen, and then, with courtly bows, climbed in himself, having, with much ceremony, bade the landlady adieu. Anna cast a keen glance all about, expecting a last glimpse of M'riar, but had none and was grieved. So soon do the affections of the lower classes fade!

After the cab started, the Herr Kreutzer carefully pulled down the blinds a little way, on both side windows, so that the inside of the cab was dark enough to make it impossible for wayfarers to note who was within.

"Father," said Anna, curiously, "why do you pull down the blinds?"

"Er--er--mine eyes. The light is--"

He did not complete the sentence.

"Father," she asked presently, "why did you change the tickets?"

"Change the tickets, Anna? I have not changed the tickets."

"But you told the landlady we were to sail from Southampton. The tickets, which you showed to me, say Liverpool."

"A little strategy, mine Anna; just a little strategy."

"I do not understand."

"No, liebschen; you do not," he granted gravely.

A moment later and the cab jounced over a loose paving-block, almost unseating M'riar from her place on the rear springs. The little scream she gave attracted the attention of the vehicle's two passengers and they peered from the window at the rear; but it was small and high and they did not catch sight through it of the strange, ragged little figure, with the set, determined face, which was clinging to their chariot with a desperate tenacity.

M'riar's feelings would have been difficult of real analysis and she did not try to analyze them, any more than a devoted dog who desperately follows his loved master when that master is not cognizant of it and does not wish it, tries to analyze the dog-emotions which compel him to cling to the trail. Such a dog knows quite enough, at such a time, to keep clear of his master's view, although his following is an expression of his love and though that love is born, he knows, of like love in his master's heart for him. M'riar was yielding to an uncontrolled, an uncontrollable impulse of love, and, though her brain was active with the cunning of the slums, had not the least idea of combatting it, or letting anything less strong than actual death would be in its deterrent force, prevent her from obeying the swift impulse to the very end. She had not taken any of her mistress' money, when she fled. Her only sin, she told herself, was leaving without notice. She had only made a little bundle of her own worn, scanty, extra clothes, which, now, was tied about her waist and hung beneath the skirt she wore. There were not many of those clothes, so the dangling bundle did not discommode her when she dodged behind the cab, ran beside it (on the far side from the lodging-house) till it turned a corner, and then sought her perch upon its springs behind. In her mouth were seven golden sovereigns, the hoard of her whole lifetime, barring some small silver and an Irish one-pound note stowed in her left stocking. Her right stocking had been darned till it was nowise to be trusted with one-eighth of her whole wealth. She had no dimmest thought of whither she was bound; she only knew that she would go, if Fate permitted, wherever Anna went, to serve her.

Arrived at the confusion of the railway station known as Waterloo, Herr Kreutzer helped his Anna from the cab, paid the cabman from his slender store of silver, hired a porter with another shilling to take all their luggage to the train and went to get their third-class railway tickets, keeping, meanwhile, a keen eye for anyone who looked to be a German of position, and noting with delight that in the crowd not one pair of moustaches stuck straight up beside its owner's nose. Slinking after him, at a slight distance, but near enough to hear quite all he said, came M'riar, and, when he had passed on, bought for herself a third-class ticket to Southampton. Her keen eyes fixed upon the backs of the two folk with whom, without their knowledge, she had cast her fortunes, she then went into the train-shed and found a place, at length, in the next carriage to the one which they had entered. Then she trained a wary eye out of the window, to make sure they did not change their minds and slip out and away without her knowledge before the train departed.

On the arrival in Southampton she waited in the railway carriage till she saw them started down the platform; then, again, she trailed them. Two minutes after the Herr Kreutzer had purchased steerage tickets on the _Rochester_ for far America, M'riar had bought one for herself. When the German and his daughter reached the shore-end of the slightly-angled gang-plank leading to the steamer's steerage-deck (close it was beside the steeper one which led up to the higher and more costly portions of the ship) she was not far behind them, trailing, watchful, terrified by the ship's mighty warning whistle which reverberated in the dock-shed till her teeth were set a-chatter in an agony of fear of the mere noise.

At this point she nearly lost her self-control and let her quarries see her, for Herr Kreutzer, in his hurry and excitement, dropped one of his small hand-bags. Almost she sprang to pick it up for him, through mere working of her strong instinct to serve him. Indeed, she would have done so had it not been for a tall and handsome youth.

This young man's eyes, M'riar had been noting, had been closely fixed upon the lovely face of Anna, doubly lovely, flushed as it now was by the excitement of the start of a great journey. He sprang forward, picked up the handbag and presented it to the old German with a frank good-fellowship of courtesy which took not the least account of the mere fact that he, himself, was on the point of stepping to the gang-plank leading to the first-cabin quarters, while Kreutzer, obviously, was about to seek the steerage-deck. M'riar, with her sharp, small eyes, noted that the youth, strong, graceful, tall, sun-burned and distinctly wholesome of appearance, did not look at Kreutzer, as he did the little service, but at Anna.

"Reg'lar toff!" she muttered, gazing at him with frank admiration, quite impersonal.

An instant later she saw that when he turned back from the rough, unpainted gang-plank to the steerage-deck to the more exclusive bridge, railed, hung with canvas at the sides and carpeted with red, which led to the first-cabin quarters, a lady seized his arm with a proprietary grasp and spoke a little crossly to him because he had delayed to do this tiny service for the pair of steerage passengers.

"Rg'lar cat!" said M'riar, estimating her as quickly as she had appraised the youth. "She's 'is mother, but she's catty. Dogs 'ud 'ate 'er, Hi'll go bail."

Her attention was absorbed, then, by the great problem of getting by the officer who examined steerage-tickets, without being seen by Kreutzer and his daughter.

"W'ere's yer luggage?" asked the officer.

"Luggage! Huh!" said M'riar. "W'at would _Hi_ want o' _luggage_? Think Hi'm a hactress startin' hout hon tour?"

"Tykes six poun' ten to land on t'other side," the officer went on, suspiciously. "'Yn't got that, nyther, 'ave yer?"

"Betcher bloomink heye Hi gawt it," said M'riar confidently, and stooped as if she would pull out her wealth to show him, then and there.

"Hin yer stawckin', eh?" the man said grinning.

That which had been in her mouth was spent for ticket, mostly, but a little still was in her hand. "W'ere'd yer think Hi'd 'ave it?" she asked scornfully. "Hin me roight hear?" Then she showed him what was in her fist.

"Garn aboard," the man said, grinning.

"'Yn't I?" she asked briskly, and, seeing that Herr Kreutzer and his Anna had passed quite out of sight into the ship's mysterious interior, went up the gang-plank hurriedly, fearing to lose sight of them. She did not realize that on an impulse she was starting to go a quarter of the way around the earth. She only knew that love, love irresistible, supreme, was drawing her to follow where they led. But notwithstanding that it was pure love which drew her, she told herself, as she went up the plank: "Hif they ketches me they'll 'eave me hoverboard an' give me to th' fish, like's not."

Twenty minutes later the great ship was swinging out into the harbor. In a dark passage on the steerage-deck cowered M'riar, for the first time in her life afloat, and wondering why the motion of the vessel seemed to make her wish to die; her white face, strained, frightened eyes and trembling hands marking her, to the experienced, unsympathetic eyes of the stern steerage-stewardess, an early victim of seasickness.

"Hi, w'ere's yer ticket?" that fierce female cried, and M'riar showed it to her, weakly, scarcely caring whether it entitled her to passage or condemned her to expulsion from the ship by a sharp toss overside.

"Garn in there," said the stewardess, studying the ticket and its bearer's symptoms simultaneously. "S'y, yer goin' ter be a nice sweet passenger to 'ave hon board, now 'yn't yer?"

"Hi'm goin' ter die," said M'riar with firm conviction and not at all appalled but rather pleased at thought of it.

"No such luck fer hus!" the stewardess replied. "Get _in_ there, cawn't yer, before hit comes quite hon?"

So M'riar, long before the ship began to definitely feel even the gentle Channel sea, was thrust into retirement, willy, nilly, and immediately sought a bunk, absolutely without interest in anything, even in her own sad fate. All she wished to do was die, at once, and she had too little energy even to wish that very vividly. Miss Anna, Herr Kreutzer and the fine young man who had been kind to them, who, ten minutes earlier, had all been real and potent interests, dimmed into hazy phantoms of a bygone activity of mind.

"Oh,--ar-r-r-r-r-r!" M'riar groaned. "Th' bloomink ship is standin' on 'er bloody 'ead, yn't 'er?"

"Garn! Keep yer 'ead _flat_. Lay _down_," the stewardess replied, "er _you'll_ be."

M'riar kept her head flat.

Out on the open deck, forward of the bridge, where, as well as aft, the vessel, like many of a bygone type was cut away, leaving the forward and after railings of the promenade-deck, like the barriers of a balcony, for the first-cabin passengers to peer across at their less lucky fellows of the steerage, Herr Kreutzer and his Anna, both bewildered, stood by their little pile of baggage, waiting for direction and assistance in searching out their quarters. Surrounding them a motley group of many nationalities was gathered. There were Germans, Swedes, some French, some Swiss, a group of heavy-browed and jowled Hungarians, a few anaemic, underfed young cockneys, and, dominating all, to the casual eye, because of their bright colors, a small group of Italians. To these the largest one among them was making himself clear.

"I," he was saying, "am Pietro Moresco. I have-a da nice political posish, an' nice-a barber-shop on Mulberry-a Strit. Some-a day I getta on da force--da pollis-force. Sure t'ing. I been-a home to see ma moth. I go-a back to make-a da more mon." He pulled out from his corded bundle of red quilts and coats and rugs some bottles of cheap wine. "I getta place for all you men." He was beginning, thus early in the voyage of these would-be citizens, to prepare to use them in the politics of his over-crowded ward in New York City. "Come-a! We drink-a to Americ. We drink-a to New York. New York da mos' reech-a place."

Catching sight of the bewildered beauty of poor Anna, and the no less bewildered dignity of Herr Kreutzer, being dazzled by the former, as was everyone in sight, and being quite as anxious to make friends among prospective German citizens as among those of his own country (a German vote is likely to be useful, now and then, on Mulberry Street) he offered her a cup, and, as she took it automatically, would have poured some wine into it with a gallant smile. Kreutzer took the cup out of her hand and passed it back to him.

"Bitte," he said, calmly. "I thank you. My daughter does not care for wine."

Moresco, angered, gave him a black scowl and took the cup.

"By Jove," said the youth who had, upon the dock, picked up Herr Kreutzer's bag. He was standing on the promenade-deck, above, beside his very, very stately mother, who, over-dressed and full of scorn for the whole world, was complaining because her doctor's orders had suggested traveling upon so slow and old a ship. "There's that stunning little German girl down there. Isn't she a picture? Gee! Her old man wouldn't let her drink with that black dago--not that she wanted to. But bully for Professor Pretzel!" "How very vulgar!" said his mother, looking down at the small, animated scene before her with disfavor. "Mere immigrants."

"I s'pose _our_ folks were, sometime," John Vanderlyn replied. "But isn't she a corker, mother?"

"John, your language is too shocking! Please see about our deck-chairs," Mrs. Vanderlyn replied.