madhouse. "Very well, Joseph! I
don't want to be in anybody's way; but no person in the house must see
that bell ring before me. Here I stay till Mistress rings--and then you
will get rid of me; I shall move to the mat outside her door, and wait
till she whistles for me. Now you may go. That's a poor half-witted
creature," he said as Joseph retired. "Lord! what a lot of them there are
in this world!" Fritz burst out laughing. "I'm afraid you're another of
them," said Jack, looking at him with an expression of the sincerest
compassion.

"Do you remember me?" I asked.

Jack nodded his head in a patronizing way. "Oh, yes--Mistress has been
talking of you. I know you both. You're David, and he's Fritz. All right!
all right!"

"What sort of journey from London have you had?" I inquired next.

He stretched out his shapely little arms and legs, and yawned. "Oh, a
pretty good journey. We should have been better without the courier and
the maid. The courier is a tall man. I have no opinion of tall men. I am
a man myself of five foot--that's the right height for a courier. I could
have done all the work, and saved Mistress the money. Her maid is another
tall person; clumsy with her fingers. I could dress Mistress's hair a
deal better than the maid, if she would only let me. The fact is, I want
to do everything for her myself. I shall never be quite happy till I'm
the only servant she has about her."

"Ah, yes," said Fritz, good-naturedly sympathizing with him. "You're a
grateful little man; you remember what Mrs. Wagner has done for you."

"Remember?" Jack reported scornfully. "I say, if you can't talk more
sensibly than that, you had better hold your tongue." He turned and
appealed to me. "Did you ever hear anything like Fritz? He seems to think
it wonderful that I remember the day when she took me out of Bedlam!"

"Ah, Jack, that was a great day in your life, wasn't it?"

"A great day? Oh, good Lord in Heaven! where are there words that are big
enough to speak about it?" He sprang to his feet, wild with the sudden
tumult of his own recollections. "The sun--the warm, golden, glorious,
beautiful sun--met us when we came out of the gates, and all but drove me
stark-staring-mad with the joy of it! Forty thousand devils--little
straw-colored, lively, tempting devils--(mind, I counted them!)--all
crawled over me together. They sat on my shoulders--and they tickled my
hands--and they scrambled in my hair--and they were all in