rse of lessons is
finished and they make no reply, or if they do, it is an excuse or a
promise. I cannot go to law with them, and if I could, just think what
it would cost for the lawyer! Besides, they are very poor--these
neighbours of ours. Music with them is a luxury, not a necessity.
Poor souls, it brings a little joy into their lives! They struggle so
hard to get higher in the scale of existence; why should I impede their
progress by demanding my pound of flesh? No, my dear Miss Husted, they
do the best they can; but they are poor."

"And so are you," replied Miss Husted, shaking her curls.

Von Barwig shook his head dubiously. "I'm afraid--I--I don't put my
heart into my work." He did not like to tell her he thought the
neighborhood he lived in was partly to blame.

"Who could put soul into a thing like that?" and he pointed to a cheap
violin he had bought to play to his pupils when he taught them. "Or
that?" and he dropped the lid of his piano to show his contempt for the
tin pan, called by courtesy a concert grand. Miss Husted looked sad;
the ever-present tear was close at hand and Von Barwig saw it coming.

"But, never mind, my dear Miss Husted; all comes right in the end!
It's all for some good or other. I can't see it myself, but I know
it's all for my good. Come! Cheer up, cheer up!" and he looked at her
with such a beatific smile that she thought for the moment that she was
very unhappy and that he was trying to help her.

"Very well, I will," she said resignedly, allowing herself to be
comforted.

That was one of Von Barwig's individual traits. No one ever thought of
cheering him up, for no one knew that he suffered, except perhaps
Jenny. She alone saw through his smile, and felt rather than knew that
it hid a heart torn with suffering and emotion.

A few days after this Von Barwig read in one of the papers that a man
named Van Praag, whom he knew years before in Berlin as a ticket-taker
in one of the theatres, was going to give a series of concerts in one
of the large concert halls in New York. He mustered up courage to go
and see him. Van Praag received him cordially and invited him to
dinner that evening at one of the big hotels. Von Barwig put on his
old dress suit, and Houston Mansion quickly recognised the fact. Miss
Husted especially was most enthusiastic.

"Oh, professor, how well you look!" she cried. "Mrs. Mangenborn, do
come and see the professor with his evening clot