such luxuries as tears. Why, time and time
again, I've asked her why she was crying. And always she'd answer: 'For
no reason at all. For nothing.' And that is the answer. They love to
cry. But that's what they all cry over;--'Nothing!'"

Hartmann did not answer. Grimm's gust of anger had been blown away by
the wind of his own words. He went on in a half-amused reminiscent tone:

"James, did I ever tell you how I happened to get Katje? She was
prescribed for me by Dr. McPherson."

"Prescribed?"

"Yes, just that. As an antidote for getting to be a fussy old bachelor
with queer notions in my head. And the cure worked to perfection. When
my old friend Staats died----"

"Oh, yes, I've often heard----"

But Peter Grimm was no more to be balked in the repetition of his
favourite narrative merely because his hearer chanced to be familiar
with its every detail, than he would have been balked in hearing the
Grimm genealogy re-read for the thousandth time.

"When my old friend Staats died," he said, "McPherson brought Staats's
motherless baby over here; and he said: 'Peter, this is what you need in
the house.' Those were his very words: 'Peter, this is what you need in
the house.' And, sure enough, the very first time I carried her up those
stairs over there, all my fine, cranky, crotchety bachelor notions flew
out of my head. I knew then, in a flash, that all my knowledge and all
my queer ideas of life were just humbug! I had missed the Child in the
House. Yes,"--his voice dropped with a strain of soft regret,--"I had
missed _many_ children in the house. James, I was born in that little
room up there. The room I sleep in. And one day, please God, Katje's
children shall play in the room where I was born."

"Yes," acquiesced Hartmann as Grimm ceased,--and the secretary's voice
and words grated like a file on the old man's tender mood,--"it's a very
pretty picture--if it turns out at all the way you are trying to paint
it."

"How can it turn out wrong?" demanded Peter, in fresh irritation.
"What's the matter with the way I'm 'painting the picture'?"

"From your standpoint, as I say, it's very pretty. But it's more than a
mere question of sentiment. Her children can play anywhere."

"What? You're talking rubbish! I pick out a husband _here_--and her
children can play in China if they want to? Are you crazy? Pshaw,"
turning away in disgust, "I just waste words in opening my heart's dear
secrets to a dolt like you."

"P