_bowl_? Who cared? In fact, all DÃ¥sseldorf cared.

One day the Frau Pastorin called Kitty into her parlor. "Dear child," she
began, "if your good mother--"

"She has been dead fifteen years," said Kitty.

"If your father--" continued the Frau Pastorin.

"He? Oh, I can't remember him at all," said Kitty.

"Have you no family?" was the question that the Frau Pastorin put squarely.

"An uncle or two somewhere in Iowa," Kitty answered. "An aunt brought me
up, and then died, poor thing!" A smile flitted across Kitty's face, and
tears sprang to her eyes; but her questioner saw only the smile. The world
is full of such purblind folk.

"Where were you last night so late?" she said acridly.

Kitty turned on the plump little woman and looked down at her.

"When Miss Smythe told me that I should find a pleasant home here, she
made a sad mistake," was the irrelevant answer that Mees gave. It puzzled
the Frau Pastorin for full a week. Then Hedwig Vogel and Mees paid their
honest debts and took up quarters with Frau Tisch, in the Rosenstrasse.

"It is much pleasanter here," cried; Kitty, as she moved about the parlor,
transforming the commonplace aspect of the room. "And it is cheap, too. I
thought Frau Tisch would ask more than Frau Raben."