Oscar asked nothing better. Hardly had he entered the yard than piff! paff! the play began again. Such a game he had never had before, nor with such players. The boys were as well pleased as he; and they played on till the big factory bell rang for close of work, and Oscar remembered that he must go home. He wanted to make acquaintance with these boys. The three playmates had, to be sure, already struck up a friendship, but they did not even know each other’s names. Oscar now told his, and asked theirs; and learned that they were named Fink; the sons of the family who lived in the large house. They were from St. Gall, and were warm-hearted, wide awake young fellows. They made friends with this new acquaintance from Switzerland with all their hearts, and Oscar was as ardent as they. What enterprises they would plan and carry out together! But there was no time to stop and talk about it now. He could only hint to them that he had a project of founding a great society of Swiss, a kind of Swiss Confederation, in which he wished them to take part. They received the idea with enthusiasm, and, having fixed a time for meeting his new friends again, Oscar returned to Rosemount with a happy heart. But what kind of a factory that was of Mr. Fink’s, he knew as little as before; he had forgotten to ask. From this time Oscar was always missing during the time that the children were left to themselves to play as they pleased out-of-doors. No one minded his absence; Fred was so busy with his collections that he thought of nothing else; Fani and Emma were absorbed in their own plans and only wanted to be let alone; and Elsli, feeling that her society was not important to any one, sat by herself on the bench under the lindens, occupied with her own thoughts by the hour together. Sometimes she grew unhappy at the thought that she was living here so well-off and at ease, while her father and mother still had such a hard life at home. Often she thought about Nora, and wondered if she had forgotten to ask the heavenly Father to call her to himself. She could well be spared from the earth, where no one needed her, and she longed to go. To tell the truth, Elsli dreaded to look forward. She did not feel at home in Mrs. Stanhope’s house; she had a constant sense of unfitness for the position; yet when she thought of going back to her parents, she knew that there she should be equally out of place. So the poor child was living a lonely life at beautiful Rosemount, and thinking herself a useless and superfluous being on the face of the earth.