"FrÄulein, I have no more money—not one little brown cent in the wide world," said Nancy, sitting on the lawn of the Gartenhaus, and drinking afternoon tea out of FrÄulein's new violet-edged cups.

"So?" said FrÄulein. For a long time her lips moved in mental calculation. Then she said: "I could let you have forty-seven dollars."

Nancy put down the cup, and, bending forward, kissed FrÄulein's downy cheek.

"Dear angel!" she said; "and then?"

"What is to be done?" said FrÄulein, drying her lips on her new fringed serviette, and folding it in a small neat square.

"Mah!" said Nancy, raising her shoulders, swayed back into Italian by the stress of the moment.

"No news from your husband?"

"Bah!" said Nancy, shrugging her shoulders again, and waving her hand from the wrist downwards in a gesture of disdain.

FrÄulein sighed, and looked troubled. Then she said:

"You must come and live here, you and Anne-Marie. I will send Elisabeth away—anyhow, she has broken already three lamp-glasses and a plate—and we must live with economy." FrÄulein, who had lived with that lean and disagreeable comrade all her life, then coughed and looked practical. "Yes, I shall be glad to get rid of that clumsy girl, Elisabeth."

Nancy put one arm round her neck and kissed her again. Then she said: "I have only one hope."

"What is that?" asked FrÄulein.

It was Nancy's turn to cough. She did so, and then said: "There is ... there are ... some ... some people in England who are interested in me—in my writings. I think ... they might help ... I ought to go over and see them."

"Certainly," said FrÄulein, "you must go. And I will keep Anne-Marie here with me. Then she need not interrupt her violin-lessons."

"Yes," said Nancy. "You could keep Anne-Marie...." She sighed deeply. "Of course she must not interrupt her lessons. I suppose you think I ought to go?"

"Of course," said FrÄulein, who was practical. "A firm like that won't do anything without seeing you and talking business. But mind, mind they do not cheat! Authoresses are always being cheated."

Nancy smiled. "I shall try not to let them."

"Being English, perhaps they will not. In Berlin——" And here FrÄulein repeated a discourse she had made many, many years ago in Wareside when Nancy's first poem had been read aloud. FrÄulein remembered that day, and spoke of it now with tearful tenderness. She also believed she remembered bits of the poem:

"This morning in the garden
I caught the little birds;
This morning in the orchard
I picked the little words."

"What!" said Nancy. "Why did I 'pick the little words'?"

"Perhaps it was 'plucked,'" said FrÄulein, looking vague.

"This morning in the garden
I caught the little words;
This morning in the orchard
I plucked ... or picked the little birds——"

—"or caught them," continued FrÄulein, much moved.

"I cannot say that that sounds very beautiful," said Nancy.

"Oh, but it was. It may have been a little different. But it was lovely. And you were a little tiny thing, like Anne-Marie!"

"Listen to Anne-Marie," said Nancy.

Anne-Marie had insisted upon bringing her violin to the Gartenhaus, and was now practising on it in the dining-room. The windows were open. She was playing a little cradle-song very softly, very lightly, in perfect tune.

"That is indeed a Wonderchild," said FrÄulein.

Markowski had called her a Wonderchild directly. When he had seen her weeping convulsively after he had played, he had exclaimed: "This is a Wonderchild. I will teach her to play the fiddle."

And sure enough he had come to the house on the following day, with a little old half-sized fiddle, like a shabby reproduction of the dead Guarnerius, and had given Anne-Marie her first lesson. The lesson had been long, and Anne-Marie had emerged from it with feverish eyes and hot cheeks, and with anger in her heart. For the Bird, or the Fairy, or the Sorcerer, or the Witch that made music in other violins, did not seem to be inside the little shabby fiddle Markowski had brought her.

"Be gentle, be gentle! and do what I say," said Markowski, with his stringy black hair falling over his vehement eyes. "One day the Birds and the Witches will be in it, and they will sing to you. Now, practise scale of C."

And Anne-Marie had practised scale of C—to Nancy's amazement, for she thought that in one lesson no one could have learnt so much. In ten lessons Anne-Marie had learnt fifteen scales and a cradle-song. In two months she had learnt what other children learn in two years. So said Markowski, who got more and more excited, and gave longer and longer lessons, and came every day instead of twice a week.

"What do I owe you?" Nancy asked him. "I can't keep count of the lessons. You seem to be always coming."

"Never mind! never mind!" said Markowski, waving excited, unwashed hands. And as he had heard about their financial position from George and Peggy, he added, "You will pay me ... when she plays you the Bach Chaconne!"

"Very well," said Nancy, who thought that that meant in a week or two. "Just as you please, Herr Markowski."

And then she thought he must be insane, because he was bent with laughter as he packed away his violin.

FrÄulein MÜller made accounts in a little black book all one day and half one night, and in the morning she went to Lexington Avenue to see Nancy.

"I can give you eighty dollars. Will that pay your journey to England to see the firm of publishers?"

Oh yes, Nancy thought so. And how good of her! And how could Nancy ever thank her?

"Of course, those people will be glad to advance you something at once, even if the manuscript is not quite ready," said FrÄulein, who was romantic besides being practical.

"I suppose so," said Nancy.

"See that you have a proper contract. You had better ask a barrister to make it for you." And Nancy promised that she would.

So FrÄulein hurried off to the Deutsche Bank, and drew out eighty dollars and a little extra, because Anne-Marie would have to have puddings and good soups while she was with her. The thought of giving puddings to Anne-Marie made her hurriedly take her handkerchief from her pocket and blow her nose.

"One day it shall be sago, one day it shall be rice, and one day it shall be tapioca, with KonfitÜre." And FrÄulein MÜller hurried with her eighty dollars to Nancy.

But then a strange thing happened. Nancy would not go. Day after day passed, and Nancy always had some excuse for not having packed her trunk or taken her berth. Surely it was not so difficult to pack the little things she wanted for a short business journey. Her new navy-blue serge, observed FrÄulein, was very good, and the brown straw hat for autumn would do nicely.

"You must dress sensibly in a business-like way to go and see those people," said FrÄulein. "It would never do if you went looking like a flimsy fly-away girl."

"No, indeed," said Nancy, smiling with pale lips. That evening she wrote to George. He came up to town at the lunch-hour next day, and asked to see her. She left Anne-Marie at table eating stewed steak, to go and speak to him.

"George," she said, keeping in hers the cool damp hand he held out, "I want money. I want a lot of money."

George slowly withdrew his hand, and pulled at a little beard he had recently and not very successfully grown on his receding chin.

"Then I guess you must have it," he said.

"But I want a great deal. Two or three hundred dollars," said Nancy. "Or four——"

"Stop right there," said George. "Don't go on like that, or I can't follow." And he pulled his beard again.

"Oh, George, how sweet of you! how dear of you!" And she clasped his moist left hand, which he left limply in hers.

"The bother of it is, I don't know how I shall get it," said George. "I'm just thinking that"——

"Oh, don't tell me—please don't tell me!" said Nancy. "I—I'd rather not know! I know you won't steal, or murder anyone, but get it, George! Oh, thank you! thank you so much! Good-bye!"

And Nancy, as she looked out of the window after him, at his cheap hat and his sloping shoulders, and saw him board a cable-car going down-town, felt that she was a vulture and a harpy.

"The Girl in the Letters has demoralized me," she said.

He brought her four hundred dollars on the following Monday, and she wept some pretty little tears over it, and covered her ears with her hands, and dimpled up at him, when he began to tell her how he had got them. She was the Girl in the Letters. She was practising. And with George it answered very well—too well! She had to stop quickly and be herself again. Then he went away.

And she went out and bought dresses. She bought drooping, trailing gowns and flimsy fly-away gowns, and an unbusiness-like hat, and shoes impossible to walk in. She bought CrÈme des CrÈmes for her face, and CrÈme Simon for her hands, and liquid varnish for her nails, and violet unguent for her hair.

Then she waited for the Unknown's next letter, saying

"Come."

The letter did not arrive. A day passed, and another. And he did not write. A week passed, and another, and he did not write. Nancy sat in the boarding-house with her dresses and her hats and her CrÈme des CrÈmes. The entire four hundred dollars of George, and fifteen dollars out of FrÄulein's eighty, were gone.

Nancy sat and looked out of the window, and thought her thoughts. Could she write to the Unknown again? No. Hers had been the last letter. He had not answered it. Should she telegraph? Where to? And to say what? He had gone to Peru. She knew, she felt, he had gone to Peru. The pretty, silly, romantic story was ended—ended as she had wished it to end, without the banal dÉnouement of their meeting. Better so. Much better so. Nancy was really very glad that things were as they were.

And now what was going to happen to her? She said to herself that she must have been insane to borrow all that money and buy those crazy dresses, those idiotic hats. What should she do? The terror of life came over her, and she wished she were safely away and asleep in the little Nervi cemetery between her father and her mother, cool and in the dark, with quiet upturned face.

Oh yes, she was really exceedingly glad that things were as they were!

Half-way through the third week a telegram was brought to her. It came from Paris.

"Why not dine with me next Thursday at the Grand HÔtel?"

To-day was Thursday.

She cabled back.

"Why not? At eight o'clock.—Nancy."

Oh, the excitement, the packing, the telegraphing to FrÄulein, the hurry, the joy, the confusion! The stopping every minute to kiss Anne-Marie; the sitting down suddenly and saying, "Perhaps I ought not to go!" And then, the jumping up again at the thought of the boat that left to-morrow at noon.

FrÄulein came to fetch Anne-Marie at ten in the morning. She arrived joyful and agitated, bringing a fox-terrier pup in her arms, a present for Anne-Marie, to prevent her crying.

"Why should I cry?" said Anne-Marie, with the hardness of tender years.

"Why, indeed!" said Nancy, buttoning Anne-Marie's coat, while quick tears fell from her eyes. "Mother will come back very soon—very soon."

"Of course," said Anne-Marie, holding the puppy tightly round the neck, and putting up a shoe to have it buttoned.

"Don't let her catch cold, FrÄulein," sobbed Nancy, bending over the shoe; and when it was fastened, she kissed it.

"No," said FrÄulein, beaming. "She shall wear flannel pellipands that I am making for her."

The second shoe was buttoned and kissed. Her hat was put on with the elastic in front of her ears. Her gloves? Yes, in her coat-pocket. Handkerchief? Yes. The mice? Yes; FrÄulein had them, and the violin, and the music-roll, and the satchel. The box was already downstairs in the carriage. They were ready.

"Let me carry down the puppy," said Nancy on the landing, with a break in her voice. "Then I can hold your dear little hand."

"Oh no!" said Anne-Marie. "I'll carry the puppy. You can hold on to the bannisters."

So Nancy walked down behind Anne-Marie and the puppy. FrÄulein was in front, dreading the moment of leave-taking, and thinking with terror of the possibility of travelling all the way to Staten Island with a loud and tearful Anne-Marie. So she started a new topic of conversation.

"You shall have pudding every day," she said, trying to turn round on the second landing to Anne-Marie, close behind her, and nearly dropping the satchel and the mice, as the violin-case caught in the bannisters. "One day it shall be sago, another day tapioca...."

"I don't like tapioca," said Anne-Marie, walking down the stairs. "I don't like nothing of all that."

They were at the door. By request of Nancy, nobody was there to speak to them. But all the boarders who were in the house were looking at them from behind the drawing-room curtains.

"Then what do you like for dessert?" said FrÄulein, going down the stone steps by Anne-Marie's side, while Nancy still followed.

"I like peppermint bullseyes," said Anne-Marie, "and pink jelly." And she added: "Nothing else," while the pimply boy and the maid hoisted her into her carriage. FrÄulein got in after her, with the many packages. And the puppy barked at the mice.

"Good-bye, Anne-Marie! Good-bye, darling!" cried Nancy, kissing her with great difficulty through the carriage-window across FrÄulein, and the violin, and the mice, that were on FrÄulein's lap. "God bless you! God bless you and keep you, my own darling!"

The puppy barked deafeningly. The pimply boy nodded to the cabman, and off they were.

Nancy walked slowly back into the house, and up the stairs, and into the desolate rooms.