rer they approached to their
goal. What if the child should not take to her? What if she, try as
hard as she would, should not be able to take it to her heart at
once?--or should not be able to learn the art of managing it rightly?

The thought made her silent, and she involuntarily walked more slowly.
Jansen, too, slackened his pace, so that the good Angelica, who walked
along with them quite cheerful and free from care, was obliged to stand
still every few minutes in order to wait for the stragglers.

But she did not lose her good-nature. On the contrary, it seemed as
though the happiness of her adored friend, the share in it which fell
to her as the patron saint of the secret union, and, by no means least,
the authority which her position as protectress gave her over her
honored master, tended to excite her humor in an unusual degree, so
that she delivered the drollest speeches entirely on her own account,
whenever the other two abused too flagrantly the privilege of being
tiresome--a privilege that belongs by right to all lovers.

"Children," she cried, standing still again and fanning her heated face
with her handkerchief, "this is the first time in my life that I ever
'played the elephant' to a pair of secret lovers, but I swear by the
ball on the tower of that Protestant church never to do so again,
unless I am provided with an equipage at the very least! That you are
not very entertaining I find to be quite in order, and at all events
much better than if you should perpetually speak in sonnets, like
_Romeo_ and _Juliet_--which I find highly absurd even on the stage. But
to creep along at your side through this Sahara-like glare, while you
walk at a snail's-pace, since you no longer feel external heat because
of the flames within, is more than an elderly girl of my complexion can
stand. So we will jump into the next droschke, where I can close my
eyes and ponder why it is that love, which is after all such a
pleasurable invention, generally makes the most sensible people
melancholy."

Jansen's home lay in one of the old lanes between the city and the Au
suburb. Any one wandering along here by the side of the babbling brook,
a small tributary of the Isar, and seeing the low cottages with their
little front gardens and courtyards, and picturesque gables, might
easily imagine himself transported far away from the city and set down
in one of the country towns of the middle ages, so quiet and deserted
are the stre