anxiously quoting some anguishing
sentimentality from one of the household poets writhing amid the
pages of the affecting Gartenlaube.

It was at first so bothersome that Gard contemplated leaving the
neighborhood. Even the Buchers, truest of prosy Germans, could
grasp the ridiculousness of this situation, and it was the one item
of noisy fun they could fall back upon when they wished to be
especially entertaining.

"Mein Gott!" the Frau would cry out when going over her troubles and
arduous occupations. "And I've got to get a husband for the
Wasserhaus yet!" The Herr often went into a deafening rage about it.

"Is there no way to keep that lachrymose female out of my house with
her belated calf-love? She annoys the good Herr Kirtley." And he
would toddle out, slamming the door like a clap of thunder.

The family assumed a very self-conscious behavior when the lorn
maiden was mentioned, and were anxious Gard should know that, while
unfortunately she was their neighbor, she was not at all of their
stratum.

"Poor girl!" Gard mused. There were nearly half again as many women
as men in Saxony.

At last he came to know there seemed to be a mystery about Fraeulein
Elsa--something which was hidden from him. And a new and deeper
interest was summoned forth from within his breast. Occasionally at
table she was silent as a mile stone. Some days she did not appear
to his sight at all. And then, when he did see her, she evidently
wanted to avoid him. Very true it was that she often pored over the
little volume of Heine in her room without a word to anyone. But, of
a sudden, she would become frankly in evidence again--a floral and
quite superb girl, resolutely "making good," as was her wont.

"What is it?" Gard wondered.

None of the family ever referred to it. Even in his intimate talks
with her mother, whom Gard now and then practiced his German upon as
she was plying her needle, nothing was divulged. There was no young
German coming to the house with regularity. Consequently, could it
be love difficulties? Yet something was wrong. It lent respect to
Elsa, threw enhancement about her.

Gard concluded that the roughness of the Bucher family life
mortified her. It was often well-nigh outlandish. How could she
have so ardently studied the beautiful in music and colors without
realizing this?

But he had not been long enough in Germany to be advised that
knowledge is not expected there to enter into the inner life. What