'O, dat's noding!' answered Jacob, beginning to knead fresh dough in a long white trough, the village supply for the next day. 'I have been sitting with Wilhelmina,' I remarked, as I leaned on the casement, impelled by a desire to see the effect of the name. 'So?' said Jacob, interrogatively. 'Yes; she is a sweet girl.' 'So?' (doubtfully.) 'Dont you think so, Jacob?' 'Ye-es. So-so. A leetle black,' answered this impassive lover. 'But you wish to marry her?' 'O, ye-es. She young and strong; her fader say she good to work. I have children five; I must have some one in the house.' 'O Jacob! Is that the way to talk?' I exclaimed. 'Warum nicht?' replied the baker, pausing in his kneading, and regarding me with wide-open, candid eyes. 'Why not, indeed?' I thought, as I turned away from the window. 'He is at least honest, and no doubt in his way he would be a kind husband to little Mina. But what a way.' I walked on up the street, passing the pleasant house where all the infirm old women of the Community were lodged together, carefully tended by appointed nurses. The aged sisters were out on the piazza sunning themselves, like so many old cats. They were bent with hard, out-door labor for they belonged to the early days when the wild forest covered the fields now so rich, and only a few log-cabins stood on the site of the tidy cottages and gardens of the present village. Some of them had taken the long journey on foot from Philadelphia westward, four hundred and fifty miles, in the depths of winter. Well might they rest from their labors and sit in the sunshine, poor old souls! A few days later, my friendly newspaper mentioned the arrival of the German regiment at Camp Chase. 'They will probably be paid off in a day or two,' I thought, 'and another day may bring them here.' Eager to be the first to tell the good news to my little favorite, I hastened to the garden, and found her engaged, as usual, in weeding. 'Mina,' I said, 'I have something to tell you. The regiment is at Camp Chase; you will see Gustav soon, perhaps this week.' And there, before my eyes, the transformation I had often fancied took place; the color rushed to the brown surface, the cheeks and lips glowed in vivid red, and the heavy eyes opened wide and shone like stars, with a brilliancy that astonished and even disturbed me. The statue had a soul at last; the beauty dormant had awakened. But for the fire of that soul would this expected Pygmalion suffice? Would the real prince fill his place in the long-cherished dreams of this beauty of the wood?