It soon transpired that he had by no means given up the position in the orchestra in B——, where he had made such an excellent reputation, though he confessed to an intention of returning to America when this same reputation should have grown to such a height as to entitle him to a good place and fat salary under the Stars and Stripes. And that it was his intention that Polly should share the present honors of first violin and the possible future fatness, was as apparent as that she considered the difference of age at thirty and thirty-three by no means as absurd as it had seemed at eighteen and twenty-one. It was all very natural, perfectly natural, Miss Sally said, with a sigh; wondering the while whom she could ever find to fill Polly’s place; so prompt, accurate, abhorrent of waste, even to a fault, and generally business-like as she had always been. And she was very patient with the reveries into which Polly now fell, even at the crucial period of the twelve-o’clock dinner,—with her calling of wrong tables, and attendants out of their proper order, whereby wrath and confusion were introduced into the kitchen department of “Prices;” and with her occasional mild oblivion as to the staying powers of a barrel of sugar and the sudden rise in the price of coffee. In truth, Polly’s youth had come upon her suddenly and carried her off her feet; but, with this exception and her swain’s unusual constancy, there was nothing romantic or heroic about this pair of lovers. To sacrifice her happiness to the well-being of “Prices” was an idea for which Polly’s head had simply no room; and how very wide Franz would have opened his honest eyes at the notion that there might be nobler aims in life than the gain of a good place; or that his proposed fat salary could be considered by any one as robbed from some other fellow. “Why don’t the other fellow play better than me?” Franz would have asked; and, if it had been pointed out to him that very possibly the other fellow might, he would have answered,—providing he could have been first convinced of this,—“But then, you see, he ain’t got the backbone!” That one man should starve in a garret while another enjoyed a fat salary because of the superiority of his vertebral column was a part of the inequality of things which Franz could never have been brought to recognize in the abstract, though in the concrete he would have given his last crust to the “other fellow” without even stopping to divide it. The world would fare ill without Franz and Polly, who, perhaps, add quite as much to the sum of human happiness as more self-devoted and far-seeing people. Indeed, in case of a clear duty, both can be sufficiently self-sacrificing; and though Franz will never believe the Commune is imminent until it is proclaimed from the Bartholdi statue to the Bay of ‘Frisco, yet, if he returns to America in time, he will, when any important questions are to be settled by the ballot, invariably vote on the right side.