The others said nothing, and Joseph laughed pleasantly and remarked –

»A pity, too, for I suppose they'll burn him, soon, and then you'll naturally be sorry you haven't a sample to remember him by.«

»Don't talk so!« said Lilly. »Such things are not matter for jesting.«

»Well, then, I won't. But seriously, you know, people are talking, and he ought to be careful. That is what I tell him, and it's what father tells him; but he is so young and volatile and carefree that it hasn't any effect; he only laughs at it. Another thing: he has gone and made an enemy of the very man who could be most useful to him some day if he should get into trouble, and that man is Wilhelm Meidling, a good lawyer and a rising one.«

»How has that happened?«

»I don't know; but anyway it's so. Meidling let it out yesterday evening. Meidling is drinking again – I suppose you know that?«

Mother said she had heard something of the sort.

»Well, it's true. He drops in at the Golden Stag pretty often just here lately.«

»Ah, poor Marget!« said Lilly; »she has troubles enough, she might have been spared this one. She takes it hard – of course?«

»I suppose so, but one can't know – no one goes there.«

That hit Lilly, right in the heart – I could see it. She got up, saying –

»I am ashamed of myself; I must go to her; you must let me, mother. It is ungrateful in the happy to forsake the unhappy, whatever others may do.«

»No, no!« spoke up Joseph, alarmed; »none of that! Keep clear away from there – it is not safe!«

Poor fellow, he naturally supposed that he was the cause of her happiness, and in his pride and joy he put what should have been an appeal into the form of a kind of bridegroom-elect command, without thinking. Lilly straightened up, gave him a freezing look, and said –

»I beg your pardon. Who are you to dictate to me what I shall do?«

It was pitiful to see how he was crushed. He couldn't say a word, but only fumbled with his hands and looked stunned and vacant. Neither my father nor my mother seemed to know anything to do to relieve the situation; and so, when Wilhelm Meidling came walking in, now, he seemed like a kind of angel of deliverance, specially commissioned by Providence, and I think he hadn't any doubts that my parents were glad to see him. Lilly's welcome was not so pronounced, by a good deal; he had interrupted her project, and she had to put it by and sit down – which she did, but she couldn't have looked sociable and amiable if she had tried.

Five days had made a great and sorrowful change in Meidling. The old pleasant and friendly light had gone out of his eyes, his complexion was unwholesome, his skin puffy, his hands tremulous, his spirit moody and sour. He was a little under the influence of liquor, but not seriously so.

By way of a beginning, mother asked after Marget.

»I don't know how she is,« answered Wilhelm drearily, and with a sigh.

»You don't?« said mother, surprised at his manner and troubled by his statement. »Why, how does that come?«

»I don't suppose it would interest you,« he said, in that same dreary way, and looked around upon our faces wistfully, just as a person does who is carrying a burden upon his heart and finds it too heavy to bear, and is longing to talk about his trouble if he could find encouragement and a friendly ear. My mother saw and understood, for in her nature there was her sex's native sympathy for creatures in distress; she soon smoothed Wilhelm's path for him and made his traveling of it easy for him. Once more we heard about the chess games and the music; then this followed:

»Next day Traum was there again. More than half an hour; and did another amazing musical miracle. Marget read a tale to him out of a book – a prose one; then he sat down and played it and sang it, turning it into rhymed verse as he went along – a marvelous achievement, one is obliged to confess. In the parts where the tale was military and stirring, he filled the place with the crash of military bands; and through the music you could hear the hoof-beats of charging cavalry, the boom and thunder of artillery, the clash of steel, along with another sound that was heartbreaking – the perfectly counterfeited shrieks and cries and supplications of wounded and dying men. Such human voices! and they seemed to be in the room. Of course in the room, though really the room was a battlefield, and we saw the fight, as in a vision. When the scene of the tale changed and was soft and tender and romantic, with moonlight, and shimmering lakes, and the breath of flowers in the air, you heard only the distant strains of violins and oboes and aeolian harps. You understand, he finds all this variety of instruments in that old crazy spinet.

When he was taking his departure Marget forgot all decorum and begged him, supplicated him, implored him to stay. And that was not all: she told him she could not live with him out of her sight!«

It made the family jump; and Lilly turned a ghastly white, then flushed red and her eyes blazed. Her lips worked, but she held in.