My windows look out on the lake and bit of garden belonging to our boarding-house. Just before dinner I looked out of the window and discovered our hostess sitting in the garden, holding a bit of crotchet in her fingers. I found that she had altered in a most surprising way, and was utterly metamorphosed and unrecognisable, transformed into a portly lady, wearing a black silk dress, with hair beautifully dressed. When we entered the dining-room we saw Frau Weidemann presiding at the dinner table, looking very prim and dignified. All her boarders were present: A Russian lady—Mme. N⸺ and her daughter, Melle. Nadine, future opera-singer, studying singing with Professor Lamperti, the first singing master of the day. Then came Fräulein Weltmann, a maiden lady of ripe years, an ex-prima donna still dreaming of her successes, which she alone remembers, and who must have been once upon a time very good-looking, but it was a thing of the past, alas. All through dinner we had to listen to the endless stories of the brilliant days of her conquests in her vanished youth. I remarked that in speaking of herself she generally dropped dates. Last came an American lady, Mrs. G⸺, with her two children, a boy and girl aged eight and ten, called Hermann and Danys. Mrs. G⸺ is what one might call miscellaneous, she has an American father, a Spanish mother and a German husband. Little Danys is a Roman Catholic, and her brother is a Lutheran. Mrs. G⸺ crossed the ocean, coming all the way from New Orleans to Cernobbio, to prepare herself for professional work with Professor Lamperti, who inhabits Milan in winter and comes to Cernobbio in summer. The old mæstro has the custom to nick-name his pupils, thus Mrs. G⸺ is called “Norma” because of her two children, though they are not twins. Danys is a very clever little girl, and unusually sharp for her years. This small damsel, who sat next to Sergy at table, made shrewd observations and questions, not unfrequently astonishing her elders. Finding it her duty to entertain her neighbour, like a grown up person, she at once entered into conversation: “My name’s Danys, what’s yours? Have you got any children and how many? You are old enough to have a lot, though your wife looks so young!” cried out the ingenuous child in a breath, and when she was told by Frau Weidemann that little girls must not pass remarks, the bold little maid, turning scarlet, exclaimed: “One always asks how many children have you got when one meets for the first time!”