f all these remarks stood in the centre of the
room, blushing at the compliments paid her on all sides.

"Dear me, good people, I shall have to run away if you go on like that,"
she cried at last. "I have been so happy here," she added, turning to
Fritz. "It's the first time I've known what home was since my mother
died."

"Poor child," said Madame Dort, opening her arms. "Come here, I'll be
your mother now."

"Ah, that's just what I've longed for!" exclaimed Fritz rapturously.
"Madaleine, will you be her daughter in reality?"

The girl did not reply in words, but she gave him one look, and then hid
her face in the widow's bosom.

"Poor Eric," said the widow presently, resigning Madaleine to the care
of Fritz, who was nothing loth to take charge of her--the two retreating
to a corner and sitting down side by side, having much apparently to say
to each other, if such might be surmised from their bent heads and
whispered conversation. "If he were but here, my happiness would now be
almost complete!"

"Yes," chimed in Lorischen as she bustled out of the room, Madame Dort
following her quietly, so as to leave the lovers to themselves--"the
dear flaxen-haired sailor laddie, with his merry ways and laughing eyes.
I think I can see him now before me! Ah, it is just nineteen months to
the day since he sailed away on that ill-fated voyage, you remember,
mistress?"

But, she need not have asked the question. Madame Dort had counted
every day since that bright autumn morning when she saw her darling for
the last time at the railway station. It was not likely that she would
forget how long he had been absent!

Later on, when the excitement of coming home to his mother and meeting
with Madaleine had calmed down, Fritz, having ceased to be a soldier,
his services not being any longer required with the Landwehr, turned his
attention to civil employment; for, now, with the prospect of marrying
before him, it was more urgent than ever that he should have something
to do in order to occupy his proper position as bread-winner of the
family, the widow's means being limited and it being as much as she
could do to support herself and Lorischen out of her savings, without
having to take again to teaching--which avocation, indeed, her health of
late years had rendered her unable to continue, had she been desirous of
resuming it again.

Madaleine, of course, could have gone out as a governess, Madame Dort
being, probably, eas