ing. Anna got up with a faint sigh. "It is frightfully
hot here," she said; "I think I will go to Else."

"Ah--and I wanted to tell you about my poor Karlchen--and you avoid
me--you do not want to hear. If I am in the house, the house is too hot.
If I come into the garden, the garden is too hot. You no longer like
being with me."

Anna did not contradict her. She was wondering painfully what she ought
to do. Ought she meekly to allow Frau von Treumann to stay on at
Kleinwalde, to the exclusion, perhaps, of someone really deserving? Or
ought she to brace herself to the terrible task of asking her to go? She
thought, "I will ask Axel"--and then remembered that there was no Axel
to ask. He never came near her. He had dropped out of her life as
completely as though he had left Lohm. Since that unhappy day, she had
neither seen him nor heard of him. Many times did she say to herself, "I
will ask Axel," and always the remembrance that she could not came with
a shock of loneliness; and then she would drop into the train of thought
that ended with "if I had a mother," and her eyes growing wistful.

"Perhaps it is the hot weather," she said suddenly, an evening or two
later, after a long silence, to the princess. They had been speaking of
servants before that.

"You think it is the hot weather that makes Johanna break the cups?"

"That makes me think so much of mothers."

The princess turned her head quickly, and examined Anna's face. It was
Sunday evening, and the others were at church. The baroness, whose
recovery was slow, was up in her room.

"What mothers?" naturally inquired the princess.

"I think this everlasting heat is dreadful," said Anna plaintively. "I
have no backbone left. I am all limp, and soft, and silly. In cold
weather I believe I wouldn't want a mother half so badly."

"So you want a mother?" said the princess, taking Anna's hand in hers
and patting it kindly. She thought she knew why. Everyone in the house
saw that something must have been said to Axel Lohm to make him keep
away so long. Perhaps Anna was repenting, and wanted a mother's help to
set things right again.

"I always thought it would be so glorious to be independent," said Anna,
"and now somehow it isn't. It is tiring. I want someone to tell me what
I ought to do, and to see that I do it. Besides petting me. I long and
long sometimes to be petted."

The princess looked wise. "My dear," she said, shaking her head, "it is
not a mother