“Why?” asked Schwarz, trembling with ire--he had fetched his sister-in-law from the station twelve hours ago, long after nightfall, and had hoped that the fact of her presence was as yet unknown. “Well, I saw your maid buy _three_ little tarts at the pastry-cook’s this morning,” said the apothecary innocently; “she generally takes only two--so I thought, perhaps----” The judge darted a glance of utter contempt at his companion. “Why did you not take it for granted I might desire to eat _two_ tarts to-day?” he said with alarming politeness, and then walked into the house full of wrath. Weighty decisions were ripening within him, and the result of his deliberation became apparent as he sat down to lunch with his ladies, and suddenly delivered himself of the astonishing words: “We’ll start for Berlin this evening!” Helen dropped her fork and gazed at her husband with wide-open eyes. “This evening?” “When I say this evening I don’t mean next year,” growled the paterfamilias. “That’s just like a woman! Here you’ve always been talking and begging to go and travel--to go and leave this miserable little place for awhile, and now when I offer to go, you raise objections!” “My dear Karl!” began his wife soothingly, “I was only taken by surprise at your sudden resolve. What can have occurred to bring it about?” “I’m tired of this small town gossip, and more especially of the apothecary!” said Karl, energetically. “Confound it--I can’t blow my nose but that Lebermann sends to inquire if I have a cold! I want to go and see what life is like in a large town, where I can go about _incognito_. I can just manage to get away over Sunday. We’ll take three round-trip tickets and go to Berlin this evening. Go and pack your things!” He folded his napkin and got up. A low exclamation from Annchen interrupted him. “_Three?_--shall I go too?” [Illustration: “HELEN WAS SOFTLY CARESSING ON ONE SIDE, HIS LITTLE SISTER-IN-LAW PATTING HIS SHOULDER ON THE OTHER.”] There was such an unmistakable expression of rapture upon her charming face that a smile stole across the features of her growling brother-in-law. “Well, I should think so,” he said; “did you suppose we would leave you at home?” “Thank you, Karl--thank you!” cried Annchen, in a state of bliss; and while Helen was softly caressing her “bear” upon one side, his little sister-in-law was patting his shoulder upon the other, crying, “Thank you, Karl,--I think you are perfectly lovely!” “Well, you’re the first person that has told me so since I was two years old,” remarked the judge, whose dudgeon was melting under the beams of the rapture he had been the cause of, like snow before the summer’s sun. “Now I know how to tame such shy little birds. What, Helen? Perfectly lovely, am I?” And with a half-ironical, half-flattered shrug of his shoulders he left the room to devote himself to assiduous studies of the time-table, which to him, as to most people who rarely travel, was a book of seven seals.