aeuber, who buried her face in her cup,
in which the tea-spoon remained while she drank, and heartily longed for
connections.

But she had none. She was absolutely without relations except deceased
ones. She had been an orphan since she was two, cared for by her one
aunt till she was ten. The aunt died, and she found a refuge in an
orphanage till she was sixteen, when she was told that she must earn her
bread. She was a lazy girl even in those days, who liked eating her
bread better than earning it. No more, however, being forthcoming in the
orphanage, she went into a pastor's family as _Stuetze der Hausfrau_.
These _Stuetze_, or supports, are common in middle-class German families,
where they support the mistress of the house in all her manifold duties,
cooking, baking, mending, ironing, teaching or amusing the
children--being in short a comfort and blessing to harassed mothers. But
Fraeulein Kuhraeuber had no talent whatever for comforting mothers, and
she was quickly requested to leave the busy and populous parsonage;
whereupon she entered upon the series of driftings lasting twenty years,
which landed her, by a wonderful stroke of fortune, in Anna's arms.

When she saw the advertisement, her future was looking very black. She
was, as usual, under notice to quit, and had no other place in view, and
had saved nothing. It is true the advertisement only offered a home to
women of good family; but she got over that difficulty by reflecting
that her family was all in heaven, and that there could be no relations
more respectable than angels. She wrote therefore in glowing terms of
the paternal Kuhraeuber, "_gegenwaertig mit Gott_," as she put it,
expatiating on his intellect and gifts (he was a man of letters, she
said), while he yet dwelt upon earth. Manske, with all his inquiries,
could find out nothing about her except that she was, as she said, an
orphan, poor, friendless, and struggling; and Anna, just then impatient
of the objections the princess made to every applicant, quickly decided
to accept this one, against whom not a word had been said. So Fraeulein
Kuhraeuber, who had spent her life in shirking work, who was quite
thriftless and improvident, who had never felt particularly unhappy, and
whose father had been a postman, found herself being welcomed with an
enthusiasm that astonished her to Anna's home, being smiled upon and
patted, having beautiful things said to her, things the very opposite to
those to whic