The next afternoon, before Richard came, she devised a plan by which she could give Fritz Redlich new clothes without damage to Richard's purse or Fritz Redlich's feelings. "Think of it," she said to Richard while they were drinking tea together, "two great events occurred to me yesterday, one a very happy one, the other very sad. The first is, I met a dear old friend I used to know when I was a girl. Before he went to the university he lived on the same floor as I did. And this morning a poor student was here. He looked simply wretched, and he asked for something to eat. In case he comes again, have you any old clothes to give him? No matter what. He needs everything." "With pleasure," said Richard. "I don't know what to do with all the stuff I have at any rate." But the other one, the friend of her girlhood, made Richard thoughtful. "What's he like?" he asked. In her endeavour to keep the two mythical beings quite distinct, she began to sing the "other one's" praises much too emphatically. He was a highly endowed and quite prominent scholar, who had just completed his university course, and now stood at the entrance to a brilliant career--a paragon of knowledge and intellect and heaven knows what else. What was his specialty? She really did not know. Something awfully erudite, at any rate. And he would surely choose an academic career. Nothing else was worth while for him. Lilly talked herself into such a tangle of lies that finally she scarcely knew what she was saying. Richard, who in the consciousness of his intellectual poverty, felt a tremendous respect for a great mind, grew red in the face and looked uneasy and nettled. "I suppose he'll be wanting to visit you?" he asked. "Certainly," she replied, rejoiced at having steered in this direction so smoothly. "Congratulate you on your affinity," he said with a mocking bow, and added, laughing: "Provided I needn't meet him." Perfect. The next morning a man employed in the factory brought Lilly a huge bundle from Mr. Dehnicke. It contained a fine summer suit in the latest style looking almost new; shirts, a pair of boots, and blue, silky underwear. Richard seemed to want to prove his magnanimity in a particularly striking way, because prodigality toward the poor was not in his line. The next difficulty was to turn the garments over to Fritz Redlich without offending him and having him refuse them. When he visited her three days later she took occasion, after dinner, to show him through the rooms. He must see how she lived, she said. When she came to the door of a lumber room she opened it quite naturally as she had the others. There among discarded waists, broken vases, withered plants, and similar litter, hung the suit. "I brought it along by mistake, and some more men's clothes, when I left the general's house," she explained. "It's getting worn just hanging here." Mr. Redlich's small, sickly eyes became bright and greedy.