A man and woman who looked like Americans were walking in front of him and, just as these two passed the door of the largest house in the street, a man came out and accosted them. He seemed to be making a mistake as to their identity, and a babel of questions and answers began in Russian and English, neither side knowing what the other said. Then Little Yeogh Wough reached the group and stopped and began to talk. "He must have been spending his time learning Russian!" my husband cried in astonishment. "He is actually putting the matter right." We had come near enough to catch the boy's words--halting, jerky words, and yet clearly decent Russian, since they were understood. We seized him by the arm. "What are you doing here alone?" we wanted to know. "Oh, I'm all right! I've been teaching myself a bit of Russian. I know now what that word means that you noticed over the shop the other day and that you said looked like 'photograph.' It's 'restaurant.'" "You enterprising little wretch!" I said, laughing. PART II THE TWO GERMAN GIFTS CHAPTER VIII THE FIRST GERMAN GIFT--A ROSE I went in earlier than he expected one evening in answer to his never-failing appeal: "Come and see me in bed, mother!" and found him sitting up in his berth with a scrap of pencil and a crumpled pocket notebook and his eyes glued on something that he saw through his open porthole. He had the top inner berth, on the corridor side of the cabin, and by looking across the corridor he could get a complete view of nearly the whole of the dining-room of the liner. He thrust his pencil and paper out of sight under his blankets as I drew near; but he had done this too late, and he knew it as he met my look with one of his delightful smiles. "Whatever are you doing, Little Yeogh Wough? Show me that notebook." He drew forth the crumpled little pad of paper, and I found scribbled on it the following entries: "Mr. B----, four whiskies and sodas, with the whisky more than half-way up the glass each time. "Mrs. Delaplaine Waterton--three glasses of sherry and bitters. "Mr. Pinkerby--a Kümmel and three whiskies. "Lord ----, five whiskies and sodas, making eight since two o'clock this afternoon." "Oh, Roland! How naughty of you! Whatever put it into your head to spy on people like this?" The laugh that was on his lips was now dancing in his big brown eyes. "It doesn't do them any harm, and it's very funny," he said. "I can hear a good deal of what they say. I don't want to listen, you know, but I can't help hearing. Still, it doesn't matter, because I would not tell anybody for anything in the world.... Just fancy, Big Yeogh Wough, we're going to be in Kiel to-morrow! I shall see father in a tobacconist's shop again." "Is there anything so very wonderful in that?" "Of course there is. He's a different man directly he gets into a tobacconist's. You really wouldn't know he was father. It's so funny to watch him."