sing our
home, and we have just one week in which to find another."

"But where will you go? And why did you not tell me this before?"

"I haven't an idea where I shall lay my poor old head. In the lap of the
gods, probably, for I don't know how I shall find the time to interview
landladies and pack my belongings in seven short days. The book will
have to suffer for it. Just when it was getting along so beautifully,
too."

There was a dangerous tenderness in Von Gerhard's eyes as he said:
"Again you are a wanderer, eh--small one? That you, with your love of
beautiful things, and your fastidiousness, should have to live in this
way--in these boarding-houses, alone, with not even the comforts that
should be yours. Ach, Kindchen, you were not made for that. You were
intended for the home, with a husband, and kinder, and all that is truly
worth while."

I swallowed a lump in my throat as I shrugged my shoulders. "Pooh! Any
woman can have a husband and babies," I retorted, wickedly. "But mighty
few women can write a book. It's a special curse."

"And you prefer this life--this existence, to the things that I
offer you! You would endure these hardships rather than give up the
nonsensical views which you entertain toward your--"

"Please. We were not to talk of that. I am enduring no hardships.
Since I have lived in this pretty town I have become a worshiper of the
goddess Gemutlichkeit. Perhaps I shan't find another home as dear to my
heart as this has been, but at least I shan't have to sleep on a park
bench, and any one can tell you that park benches have long been the
favored resting place of genius. There is Frau Nirlanger beckoning us.
Now do stop scowling, and smile for the lady. I know you will get on
beautifully with the aborigines."

He did get on with them so beautifully that in less than half an hour
they were swapping stories of Germany, of Austria, of the universities,
of student life. Frau Knapf served a late supper, at which some one
led in singing Auld Lang Syne, although the sounds emanating from the
aborigines' end of the table sounded suspiciously like Die Wacht am
Rhein. Following that the aborigines rose en masse and roared out their
German university songs, banging their glasses on the table when they
came to the chorus until we all caught the spirit of it and banged our
glasses like rathskeller veterans. Then the red-faced and amorous Fritz,
he of the absent Lena, announced his intention of ente