The girl wavered. 'How many children are there?' she asked. 'Children? Children? Angels, you mean. They are perfect angels, so good and well-behaved--are they not, Rose-Marie? Fit to go at once to heaven--_unberufen_--without a day's more training, so little would they differ in manner when they got there from angels who have been used to it for years. You are fond of children, Fräulein, I am sure. Naturally you are. I see it in your nice face. No nice Fräulein is not. And these, I tell you, are such unusual--' 'How many are there?' '_Ach Gott_, there are only six, and so small still that they can hardly be counted as six--six of the dearest--' The girl turned on her heel. 'I cannot be fond of six,' she said; and went out with the heavy tread of finality. Frau Meyer looked at me. 'There now,' she said, in tones of real despair. 'It is very tiresome,' said I, sympathizing the more acutely that I knew my turn was coming next. 'Tiresome? It is terrible. In two days I have my Coffee, and no--and no--and no--' She burst into tears, hiding her face from the dispassionate stare of the Fräulein at the desk in her handkerchief, and trying to conceal her sobs by a ceaseless blowing of her nose. 'I am so sorry,' I murmured, touched by this utter melting. An impulse seized me on which I instantly acted. 'Take Johanna,' I cried. 'Take her for that day. She will at least get you over that. She is excellent at a party, and knows all about Coffees. I'll send her down early, and you keep her as late as you like. She would enjoy the outing, and we can manage quite well for one day without her.' 'Is that--is that the Johanna you had in the Rauchgasse?' 'Yes--trained by my step-mother--really good in an emergency.' Frau Meyer flung her arms round my neck. '_Ach danke, danke, Du liebes, gutes Kind_!' she cried, embracing me with a warmth that showed me what heaps of people she must have asked to her party. And I, after the first flush of doing a good deed was over and cool reflection had resumed its sway, which it did by the time I was toiling up the hill on the way home after having been unanimously rejected as mistress by the assembled maidens, I repented; for was not Johanna now my only hope? 'Frau Meyer,' whispered Reflection in my despondent ear, 'will engage her to go to her permanently on the 1st, and she will go because of the twenty marks more salary. You have been silly. Of course she would have stayed with you with a little persuasion rather than have to look for another place and spend her money at a registry-office. It is not likely, however, that she will refuse a situation costing her nothing.'