“You must be a great deal more cautious than that if you wish to carry off Franziska some day or other. If you were to ask her to marry you now she would flatly refuse you, and very properly; for how could a girl believe you were in earnest? But if you like, Charlie, I will say something to her that will give her a hint; and if she cares for you at all before you go away she won’t forget you. I wish I was as sure of you as I am of her.” “Oh I can answer for myself,” says the young man, with a becoming bashfulness. Tita was very happy and pleased all that day. There was an air of mystery and importance about her. I knew what it meant; I had seen it before. Alas! poor Charlie! V--“GAB MIR EIN’ RING DABEI” Under the friendly instructions of Dr. Krumm, whom he no longer regarded as a possible rival, Charlie became a mighty hunter; and you may be sure that he returned of an evening with sprigs of fir in his cap for the bucks he had slain, Franziska was not the last to come forward and shake hands with him and congratulate him, as is the custom in these primitive parts. And then she was quite made one of the family when we sat down to dinner in the long, low-roofed room; and nearly every evening, indeed, Tita would have her to dine with us and play cards with us. You may suppose, if these two young folk had any regard for each other, those evenings in the inn must have been a pleasant time for them. There were never two partners at whist who were so courteous to each other, so charitable to each other’s blunders. Indeed, neither would ever admit that the other blundered. Charlie used to make some frightful mistakes occasionally that would have driven any other player mad; but you should have seen the manner in which Franziska would explain that he had no alternative but to take her king with his ace, that he could not know this, and was right in chancing that. We played three-penny points, and Charlie paid for himself and his partner, in spite of her entreaties. Two of us found the game of whist a profitable thing. One day a registered letter came for Charlie. He seized it, carried it to a window, and then called Tita to him. Why need he have any secret about it? It was nothing but a ring--a plain hoop with a row of rubies. “Do you think she would take this thing?” he said, in a low voice. “How can I tell?” The young man blushed and stammered, and said: “I don’t want you to ask her to take the ring, but to get to know whether she would accept any present from me. And I would ask her myself plainly, only you have been frightening me so much about being in a hurry. And what am I to do? Three days hence we start.” Tita looked down with a smile and said, rather timidly: “I think if I were you I would speak to her myself--but very gently.”