go to bed, we used to quarrel about who should undress him and put him to bed; finally he would let the one do it that had flattered him the most during the day. And we ugly gray crows envied the lucky one horribly sometimes we really pulled each other's hair about it.»

She sat idle for a while, lost in gloomy thoughts, looking now at the canvas, now at the black wig. Then she drew herself up again and set to work with renewed energy. «Now, Tuddi, look just as proud as you can! Just imagine that Klaus Baas wants to run the paint-brush over your saucy little nose! Turn your head a little to the left that's it! Your face is proudest of all when you're looking to one side a little. That's good now now Klaus is coming with the brush that's very good! Just let yourself go and imagine he's doing it — the shameless cub! Yes, you've plenty of imagination! After this we'll paint little Sanna. What do you want to sit for, Sanna?»

The little one looked up from the beads she was stringing. Her full lips, which had parted in the intensity of her work, closed again over her big white teeth.

«I think she ought to be Zephaniah,» Tuddi said. «It doesn't matter what he wrote. You're going to be Zephaniah.>>

The child nodded, and repeated the name to herself several times. «I'll wear this chain I'm making,» she said.

about her mother,

Now and then Tuddi talked about her home who was just too dear and funny; about her father, who had been in India and had come home an invalid; about her brothers, most of whom were unendurable; about the rooms upstairs and downstairs; about a garden; about some school where studying was carried on as if it were a sort of pleasant game, and where the teachers were either hideous or heavenly; and about verses in foreign languages, that were horribly hard to learn. Once she was asking for help on a composition. She had to write an essay on The High Moments of Life.» What the teacher meant by high moments was baptism, confirmation, taking the sacrament; but Tuddi thought they were things like taking a trip to Sylt, going skating in the winter, and getting married.

Sometimes Klaus Baas took the centre of the stage. He had to tell them about the village, and the games they played there, about the pond, the churchyard, the seashore, and the sand. He was always very much afraid of making mistakes in his grammar, for High German was still a foreign, difficult speech for him. So he talked along rather stiffly and properly. Sometimes he was troubled

about what he was telling; he wasn't sure whether it was all right to tell some of the things; he would hesitate about using some expression, and get stuck entirely.

Then Tuddi had a chance to make fun of him again. «Go over and wind him up again, Sanna,» she would say. Then he didn't know what else to do but make the story move on in some other way, and so he had to make up a little. And as lies and fiction are a pretty risky business, his cheeks grew red and his eyes bright. But he had the satisfaction of hearing little Sanna say, in her gentle voice, «He's running again now, Tuddi.»>

Sometimes the black wig monopolized the conversation entirely; she gave them her representations of the grinning tiger, the hungry hyena, the bored lion - about half the zoological garden, in fact. Then she gave a «nigger show,» as she called it. She stood little Sanna in front of Klaus, and said, «Look, ladies and gentlemen! here is the negro prince Jumbo! Jumbo, show the ladies and gentlemen your teeth!» Then Sanna showed her teeth and tried to look fierce at Klaus. They were particularly fond of this scene, and gave it often. Klaus drank it in so with his eyes, with all his senses, as they stood fine and delicate at his very feet, that one day, twenty years later, when he met little Sanna in the hall of the house on Fähr Strasse in Uhlenhorst, he said the old words again,- «Jumbo, show your teeth! And it really cheered her up, worried and sad though she was.

When Obadiah was finished, Klaus Baas had to take his turn. He was to sit for Daniel, and he was supposed to look as Daniel did in the lions' den. «For that's all those Hogetrupper people know about him, Klaus!»

How happy Klaus was while they were decking him out! How confused he felt, and how honored, when the artist put the green mantle around him! What terrible den-of-lions eyes Tuddi made right in front of him! How gently and cheerily Sanna hung her string of blue beads around his neck, as he knelt in front of her! How his heart did jump when she stroked his hair hesitatingly and said, «Oh, Tuddi, just look, he has a moleskin cap on!»>

But the next day, when life was as beautiful as it could possibly be, all at once it changed; the two children did not come. The artist said that they had gone to their country home, near Hammer, earlier than usual that year, because their father was sick. He asked a few questions timidly, and learned that their father was a merchant who traded with India, and that he had caught some disease on one

of his trips there. «It's a distinguished old family, Klaus,» she said. «They used to be well off, and they aren't really poor now; but what good does their money do them, when their father is sick? There's nothing but misery in this world.>>

To-day she was painting the red mantle, which she had hanging over a chair. She worked on for a while, breathing heavily. Then she said, «Last evening I was looking in the Bible, Klaus, for the best places in it. My father was always praising the Psalms; he used to quote something Luther said about them; but Heaven help me, I can't find much of anything that would really help a man. And I don't even remember what my father used to read. It's my belief that people praise or blame a thing on hearsay for centuries; one man repeats it after another without thinking what he's saying.»

«Our teacher says,» said Klaus, in his distinct, careful, High German, «that the sermon on the mount, and then the sufferings of our Saviour, and then the thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians, are the best things in the Bible.>>

«Is that so?» she said. «Well, you come back again to-morrow, Klaus. Come back to-morrow!»

The next day, when he went into the flat, she came out of the studio, and said, in her surly yet friendly way, «We're going to leave Daniel out to-day, Klaus; I've got my brother in there he happens to be in Hamburg for a few days and he's to sit to me for an apostle. I must get on first of all with those apostles. I thought you might read aloud to me now and then, so that I'd get into the right mood; I haven't any imagination at all. You've got to read slowly, though; my brother's a simple soul, and he hasn't had anything to do with books for a long time.»

Then she went back into the studio, and Klaus went first to clean up the kitchen.

When he went into the studio and looked curiously at the brother, he was horror-struck to see that he was the drunken loafer, to whom he had boasted so six months before at the corner of the Grossneumarkt. Although the man had a new suit on, and had had his hair cut, Klaus recognized him at once by his beautiful eyes and by his beard with two shades in it. The loafer acted as if he didn't know Klaus; but once, when the artist looked away, he gave Klaus a confidential wink.

<<What do you want to read to-day?» the artist said. «I have somebody read to me while I work, Jacob, so as to get into the right mood.»

Klaus understood. He opened to the sermon on the mount, and read out the weighty passages sentence after sentence, in a slow, measured voice. The brother did not say anything; the sister painted on with real zeal and with almost a physical strain. The sweat stood out on her furrowed brow and between the gray hairs on her temples. She said nothing, except that now and then she commented on what was read: «That's good, Klaus! that's the way it ought to be!»

They worked on in this way for three or four days. On the fourth day, when Klaus was setting the picture to one side, he marveled to see how far on it was, and how clear and smooth the face stood out.

The next day, while Klaus was still at work in the kitchen, the outside door opened. Klaus thought nothing of it, because he thought it was the brother coming. But when he heard someone come groping along, stumbling heavily, he looked out the door. It certainly was the brother; but his clothes were dirty, his hair wild, and he was drunk. He nodded to Klaus Baas in sly embarrassment. Klaus hurried out of the kitchen and said softly, «Go away! get out of here but the artist had heard him. She opened the door and saw him. She did not say anything; but she waved him away with a stiff, helpless gesture. He turned around abashed, looked at her again in a stupid, confused way, and then went out.

When Klaus got done in the kitchen and went into the studio, she was sitting all huddled up in her old place before the picture, with her palette and brushes in her hands, staring straight in front of her. When she heard him come in, she pulled herself together and began to work again. Looking over at her timidly, he saw her looking intently over toward the place where her brother had sat, as if she were painting on from the image of him she had in her mind. She was quite absorbed. Gradually the strained look passed out of her firm old face, and she painted for hours with particularly keen, strong inspiration.

Klaus went back and forth, and finally went to the table to wash the brushes. She looked over at him once, and was sorry for him, standing so quietly at his work. «We'll ask the children over for Saturday, Klaus,» she said; «then it will be cheerful here again.>>

She worked on uninterruptedly for three hours, until the daylight was gone. Then she got up, and found that she was tired. «Take the picture off and turn it toward the wall,» she said. Then she went as usual into the kitchen to wash her hands.

Klaus went up and looked at the picture. He recognized the brother; but whereas the face of the real man was corrupted with mean vices, the face on the canvas was full of the noblest of all passions, the grief and enthusiasm of a great, pure cause; dreadful suffering showed in the mouth, and the eyes were drawn together, as if anxiously trying to discover aid. Klaus began to cry violently, still staring at the picture through his tears.

Coming back, she found him crying. She put her arm around him awkwardly, and walked up and down the room with him, while he wept bitterly.

«It didn't do us any good, Klaus,» she said. «The thing goes too deep for that. I thought it would turn out this way; but I wanted to try once more.»

He wanted to comfort her somehow, so he said calling her <<thou» in his warm sympathy-«But thou hast imagination, after all; Aunt Laura!»

«Oh, yes, Klaus,» she said, «when a person is in such grief! But you see for yourself now, it's all no good.»

The next day, when Klaus went home at noon, and was going to hurry off again to the artist's, he saw that his father was neither in the kitchen nor in bed. Klaus was glad; he turned on his heel briskly and said, «Has father gone out?»

Then his mother came out of the bedroom. Turning away from him, she said, in a low, hard voice, «Father has been taken to the hospital. He's to be operated on.»>

Klaus stared at her, and saw the infinite suffering in her eyes. It shook him so that he could not say a single word. <<I haven't bothered myself about him. I haven't bothered myself about him,» rang in his ears. He asked his mother what hospital it was, snatched up his cap, and ran out without another word.

In the vestibule of the hospital, he asked about his father in his clear, excited voice. A doctor came along just then and heard him. «You've come at just the right time,» he said. «Come along.»>

As they went up the stairs, the doctor put his arm around Klaus's shoulders and said, «You're a lively youngster! Where are you from? Holstein, eh? Well it may turn out that you won't keep your father much longer; then you'll have to be a stout youngster and help your mother! Don't stay with your father very long; go back and tell your mother that she must come.»>

Klaus, breathing hard, silently followed the man into the ward full of small, mean beds, in one of which lay his father. His face