'Don't be dull while I'm away,' said Joey; and departed with a nod. But he put in his head again the next moment. 'I say, Miss Schmidt--' 'Well, what?' 'You think I ought to stick to chocolates, then?' 'If you don't there'll be extraordinary complications,' said I. 'You're sure of that?' 'Positive.' 'You'd swear it?' I threw down my knife and apple. 'Now what's the matter with the boy!' I exclaimed impatiently. 'Do I ever swear?' 'But if you did you would?' 'Swear what?' 'That a bit of jewelry would bring the complications about?' 'Oh--dense, dense, dense! Of course it would. You'd be surprised at the number and size of them. You can't be too careful. Give her a hymn-book. Joey gave a loud whoop. 'Well, it's safe,' said I severely, 'and it appeals to parents.' 'You bet,' said Joey, screwing his face into a limitlessly audacious wink. 'I wish,' said I, very plaintively, 'that I knew exactly what it is I am to bet. You constantly tell me to do so, but never add the necessary directions.' 'Oh, I'm goin',' was Joey's irrelevant reply; and his head popped out as suddenly as it had popped in. Or shall I tell you--I am anxious to make this letter long enough to please you--about Frau von Lindeberg, who spent two days elaborately cutting Joey, the two first days of his appearance in their house as lodger, persuaded, I suppose, that no one even remotely and by business connected with the Schmidts could be anything but undesirable, and how, meeting him in the passage, or on his way through the garden to us, the iciest stare was all she felt justified in giving him in return for his friendly grin, and how on the third day she suddenly melted, and stopped and spoke pleasantly to the poor solitary, commiserating with his situation as a stranger in a foreign country, and suggesting the alleviation to his loneliness of frequent visits to them? No one knows the first cause of this melting. I think she must have heard through her servant of the number and texture of those pink and blue silk handkerchiefs, of his amazing piles of new and costly shirts, of the obvious solidity of the silver on everything of his that has a back or a stopper or a handle or a knob. Anyhow on that third morning she came up and called on us, asking particularly for Papa. 'I particularly wished,' she said to me, spreading herself out as she did the last time on the sofa, 'to see your good father on a matter of some importance.' 'I'll go and call him,' said I, concealing my conviction that though I might call he would not come. And he would not. 'What, interrupt my work?' he cried. 'Is the woman mad?' I went back and made excuses. They were very lame ones, and Frau von Lindeberg instantly brushed them aside. 'I will go to him,' she said, getting up. 'Your excellent father will not refuse me, I am sure.' Papa was sitting in his slippers before the stove, doing nothing, so far as I could see, except very comfortably read the new book about Goethe.