ng to think no
more about it; and I will do whatever you wish, to the very best of my
ability."

"I have been talking to your teacher," continued Mrs. Stanhope, "and he
says, if your industry and perseverance are as great as your talent, you
will be a successful artist. And as you care so much about it, I am
sure you will be persevering. So I have decided to take you with us to
Florence this winter, where you will have good instruction in drawing,
and also the benefit of the galleries. You will go on with your studies
too, for I want you to be a well educated man as well as an artist, and
you are too young yet to give up school-work. If you do well, and at the
end of a year or two still persevere in your desire to become a painter,
you shall go to an art-school, at Duesseldorf or somewhere else, and take
a course of several years. There you will find out just how much you can
do, and after that we will decide what is best for our young artist."

Fani sprang to his feet and stood speechless before his kind
benefactress. When he tried to speak, tears came instead of the words he
meant to utter.

Mrs. Stanhope saw his emotion with far more satisfaction than if he had
overwhelmed her with thanks.

"Now," she said to herself, "he is certainly in earnest."

"Meanwhile," she continued aloud, "we shall often be with you, Elsli and
I, sometimes at home, or wherever it is best for us to spend the
winters. In summer we shall be all together here. You are my own
children now; and I shall do for you just as I should have done for my
Philo and Nora if they had stayed with me."

Tears stood in Mrs. Stanhope's eyes, but she smiled too, as she held out
her arms to the children, and drew them, radiant with joy and gratitude,
into a mother's embrace.

There were great rejoicings among their friends in Buchberg over the
news that Mrs. Stanhope had adopted the two children, and that Fani was
to become an art-student. Oscar and Fred, and still more the triumphant
Emma, could already see with prophetic eyes the announcement of the
great exhibition to be held in the neighboring city, of the wonderful
landscapes of that "celebrated painter, Fani von Buchberg!"

Heiri's family grew better off every year with the help that came from
the absent children and their new mother, and Elsli was happy in the
thought that her father's hardest days were over, and that her own
good-fortune had brought good to him also.

Oscar and the Fink boys ke