“That’s good,” she said coolly, “who is it?” “Ah! I won’t tell, or she’d be running off,” said the lad; “but if any fellow cuts in ahead of me, I’ll throw him downstairs. Miss Polly, if I was to kiss her hand, you know, would she be mad at me?” “Yes, I think she would,” rejoined Polly. “There are my aunts, who have come up for the New Year wishes; it _must_ be near twelve.” Sally and Susan had been busy in the kitchen over the supper, all the evening, but at this moment appeared in the doorway, to see the Old Year out and the New Year in, smiling and radiant in the new dresses which Frau Anna had made for them. “Aunt Susan looks so very pale,” said Polly uneasily, “I am afraid she has been working too hard. I ought to have stayed and helped them, but they were both so kind, and the music sounded so bright and cheering,”— “There was so little to do,” said Franz, “the supper was mostly ready”— At this moment something—perhaps a dynamite bomb, as Polly had said,—exploded on the stage, and Polly found her hand suddenly seized and kissed. “_Prosit Neujahr!_ Miss Polly,” cried Franz; “I hope you may be as happy as I would like to make you.” Polly had no time to be angry; indeed she was half stunned by the “Prosits” and handshakings going on all around her. But through it all there rang all at once a shrill, grief-stricken cry. “Not _now_, Susan! Oh! not _now_, when we were goin’ to be so happy!” For, amid the laughter and good wishes all around her, Susan Price had suddenly and quietly fainted away. CHAPTER XIV. LEARNING AND TEACHING. From the swoon into which she had fallen on that New Year’s Night Susan Price was slow in reviving. But it was nothing, she said, when she had at last regained consciousness; she was only stupid and tired. So the ball went on undisturbed, the dancers being only too ready to accept any theory that would not mar their enjoyment. But Sally went about her work with dry eyes and set lips. It was all over, she thought, as she rapidly served the ice-cream; Susan was struck with death, she would never live through a year that had opened so. “An’ after all we’ve went through together,” thought Sally, “to die jest as things is growin’ brighter. Well, the Lord knows best, and she’ll be took care of up there; but how I am to live without her I s’pose He knows, but it’s more than I do. You, Polly,” she added aloud, “you ain’t got no call to slice that cake so thin. Give the folks the worth of their money, do. And take a sharper knife to it, for a good half goes in crumbs, and I despise crumbs. They are jest clear sinful waste, specially cake crumbs, that can’t even be fed to the birds.” “I’ll eat ‘em,” said Heinz Schaefer, who had, with several other boys of his age, volunteered as waiters for the new caterer.