"Yes, I am a philanthropist; but there is small merit in that. Some people love puppies and kittens, others cultivate flowers with enthusiasm,--I love to educate and train human beings. Whenever a pair of melancholy eyes stare out at me from a child's face, I want to stick the child in my herbarium like a rare flower. Yes, if it only cost as little to cultivate children as plants, I should have had a human hot-house long ago. But the taste is so confoundedly expensive." "Yes, we all know that you spend your whole income in such good works. You might have been a millionaire long ago, if it had not been for your lavish generosity." "What would you have? One man wastes his money upon one whim, and another on another. This happens to be my whim, and I spend just as much upon it as I can conscientiously in the interest of my adopted son, who stands nearest my heart. But now do me the kindness to leave the room, for our talk is disturbing the child's sleep. I will stay here for an hour and watch her." "Come, Angelika," said Neuenstein: "Uncle Heim is very cross to-day,--let us go home." He took the child's hand, and nodded affectionately to Heim. "Shall I send the carriage for you?" "No, I thank you; I must return to the capital; the king has commanded my attendance this afternoon. But I shall be here again to-morrow." "Adieu, dear uncle," said little Angelika, standing on tiptoe, and holding up her rosy lips to be kissed. "You won't be cross to me, will you?" she asked, nestling her fair curls among his gray locks as he bent down to her; "I have been so good!" And then she went softly out with Herr Neuenstein. When Heim was alone, he sat down by the bedside, and silently contemplated the sleeping child. "I'll wager," he thought, "that she will be very beautiful one of these days. Her face is older than her years, and that is always ugly in a child, but when her age accords with the earnestness of that brow, and her features lose their sharpness under more kindly treatment, it will be a magnificent head. To think of having such a child and beating it half to death! Such a child!"