dfather lived. So Edi looked down on Leopoldy from an elevation of a
fourth class boy and noticed with scorn how Sally found pleasure in the
little fellow and befriended him. But that did not last long for, after
a trial of a week, Leopoldy was set back two classes, since he had been
put in the fifth class on account of his years, but not his deserts. In
these eight days Sally had discovered, with sorrow, that Leopoldy was
unusually silly, and Sally was glad that the enormous gap that lies
between the fifth and third class, made easier the rupture of this
friendship which could not continue, for nothing could be done with
Leopoldy. So it happened that no one listened with sympathy to the
enthusiastic description which Sally gave of her new friends, for each
one remembered Leopoldy, and that was not inspiring.

This general coolness angered Sally very much. She knew her new friends
if they would only believe her. All ought to be so interested in this
mother and her Erick, that they would want to know everything possible
about them, and now no one asked a question and they hardly listened to
her communication. That was too much; Sally had to relieve her tension.
She suddenly broke forth to Edi, who was entirely lost in his book:
"Although you read a thousand books one after the other, and act as if
one did not tell anything, and you think that one must have no
friendship with any human being on this earth but only for the
thousand-thousand-year-old Egyptians, yet you might be glad to have a
friend like Erick."

Edi must have just read something that made him solemn, for he looked
quite restrainedly up from his book and said quite seriously: "You see,
Sally, you do not at all know what friendship is, for you believe that
one can have a new friend every week. But one ought to have only one
friend for the whole life, and one must drag his enemy three times
around the walls of Troy."

"Then he will have to make a nice journey if he comes from Upper Wood,"
remarked Sally quickly.

The mother meanwhile had left the room, and Aunt rose from her work.

"You will get quite barbaric from pure historical research," she said,
turning to Edi, "but now it is high time to go to bed, quick! But where
is Ritz?"

Ritz had withdrawn behind the stove a full hour ago in the hope of there
escaping his fate for some time. But sleep had overcome him in the dark
corner.

"Now we have the trouble," the aunt cried, when the sleeper had been