old, and opening their little blue eyes. What fun and pleasure it is
for children, to see the mother with her young ones, and the droll
sports of the kittens, and their skipping and tumbling and jumping
about, nobody who is grown up can understand. On the very same day
master Eleazar had just got a new airgun, which he wanted to try.
Complaints had for some time been made to my father, that my cat used
to hunt the singing birds and eat them. It was taking the air behind
the house, in the garden, and amusing itself by running up and down
the big orange-tree. On the sudden Eleazar shot at it and it fell
dead; and now the kittens too were to be drowned. Never before had I
thought him so brown and nasty, so unlike a human being. In the night
I prayed that God would let him too die; but the very next morning,
though I was still such a mere child, it struck me to the heart, how
very, very unhappy he must be, that there was no creature he could
love, and neither man nor beast could love him; and so I think still.
Such an odious creature as he is, he will never find a heart on earth,
if I were to blot him out of mine."

"Dear little Rose," said Edward, somewhat calmer, "you must not be too
hasty, and assuredly you will change your mind on this point by and
by."

"My fate," she again began, while the tears mounted into her bright
eyes, "has in fact been just like that of the poor little kittens;
only that God Almighty did not let me be drowned in the same wretched
manner. But I too never knew my mother; she had never the happiness of
bringing me up; she died shortly after my birth. My foster-father here
is very kind to me; still it must be quite a different feeling to have
a real father; but he too is in his grave. Now, reckoning up all this,
methinks we have here made out quite unhappiness enough for so young a
thing."

"Dearest Rose," said Edward after a pause, "would it give you any
pain, if you knew that I too was very unhappy? or if I too were gone?"

"Alas! my dear good friend," she exclaimed, "don't make me cry. I tell
you, I never liked anybody so well as you. But happy and gay as you
are, with all the world so fond of you, you can do very well without
my love. But I cannot do without yours."

A servant now came and called Edward away to the old man. The
conversation must have been of deep interest; for Balthasar as well as
the stranger seemed dissolved in tears, though both were trying hard
to collect themselves.