"She must have had plenty of practice, mustn't she?" remarked Emmie, taking a view of the matter which fell rather like a wet blanket on my enthusiasm. "I expect she has recited that poem dozens of times before. You see she says it off by heart, and Frau Schimpf told me she is accustomed to immense audiences in Berlin, and thinks nothing at all of the people here." Our entertainment was an undeniable success, and the committee were able to hand over for Gretchen's use a sum of money sufficient to keep the little maiden in comfort for many months to come. Its results, so far as I was concerned, were less happy. My thoughts would wander off too constantly to Madame B. I began to show small civilities to the _dame de compagnie_, who took them in very good part; and listening to the ease and fluency with which she rattled off her native language, it appeared to me that speaking German must really be an easier, simpler thing than I used to imagine, and I resolved to set to work at once to pick up all I could of it. _Ja nein_, those were words I knew already, and I had learnt to call _Kellner_ in commanding tones whenever there were any orders to be given through Emmie to the waiters. I would go a little further now, and one day, when the child had been telling me some long story of her adventures while I had been writing letters, I drew myself up, and replied complacently. "_Ach, so._" But Emmie was not impressed, as I had expected her to be, by my proficiency; indeed, she took it quite the wrong way, for she leant back in her chair with a burst of laughter that surprised me, and as soon as she could speak, exclaimed, "My dearest uncle Adolph" (she had called me so ever since the memorable Tuesday night), "you really are too funny. When I come down to stay with you in the winter we will get up some private theatricals, and you will bring the house down. I had not the faintest notion you were such a mimic; it is inimitable, just her very tone and manner to the life." "Whose tone and manner?" I asked, faintly, trying to look unconscious. "Why, Frau Schimpf's, of course; it could not be any one else. Oh uncle Adolph, what a shame of you to be so civil to the poor old thing, when all the time you were doing it only to get that up! Do say it again, though; I can't think how you could contrive to catch her voice and accent so completely."