"Käthi was expelled soon after, but Daisy was allowed to stay on because her mamma had subscribed to the new school buildings. But it did her no good. Not any decent girl would speak to her again. What I have lived through. Think of it! Then I came here to Halewitz. Ah, and how I love it! though I have my troubles, even here." She paused and gave him a shy entreating glance, as if she would say, "I know who has only to speak one word to free me from them." He laughed and stretched himself; and then thought with embarrassment of the other woman who had come into his house to disturb its peace. "We all have our troubles, my dear," he said. "You, too?" she asked, lifting her eyes to him in alarm. "More than enough, my child." "Yes, yes, I know," she sighed. "Grandmamma is always talking about it." "About what?" "About your having more debts than you have hairs on your head, and that you often don't know on Saturdays where to get money to pay the wages." "Our dear respected grandmamma is an old chatterbox." "But if s true, isn't it?" "Yes, the devil can't deny it." She was silent and seemed to be considering deeply. Then she inquired, crinkling her forehead-- "For about how much longer can you hold on?" "Hold on--what do you mean?" "How long, I mean, before you come a cropper, as the saying is?" "Ah, now it is evident you were educated at Hamburg," he said, trying to joke. But she would not be evaded. "Could you hold on, do you think, another four years and four months?" "Why do you insist on the fours?" he laughed. She drew down the corners of her mouth. "Now you are making fun of me," she said, "and it is really rather sad.... I am _so_ rich, and have, so far, too much money." "Ah I you would like to lend me some?" "I _can't_, that's the worst of it," she answered; "all through the stupid trusteeship. It is too provoking;" and she scuffled her feet impatiently. "How much would you be prepared to give me?" he asked, for the subject amused him. "All." A stab of melancholy happiness shot through him; that feeling which he had not been able to recapture before. Now he was obliged to suppress it and goad himself into keeping to the comic side of the question. With a hurried laugh, he cried-- "Hullo, little one, no one can call you stingy." An anxious look was cast at him, which asked plainly, "Don't you understand me?" Then she crouched down and drew herself shivering away from him, while the tears rolled down her cheeks, over her parted lips and clenched teeth.