had every appearance of meaning what she said.

Frau Brandt had sunk back in her chair, and was nodding her white-capped
old head again.

"Oh, my child, my child," she grieved. "Will you never rid your fancy of
these high-flown, unpractical, romantic whimsies? It all comes of
reading poetry." She herself, good woman, read little but her prayers.

"Oh, my dear true Heart," responded Maria Dolores, laughing. She crossed
the room, and placed her hand affectionately upon Frau Brandt's
shoulder. "My dearest old Nurse! Do not distress yourself. This is not
yet a question of actuality. Let us not cry before we are hurt." And she
stooped, and kissed her nurse's brown old brow.

But afterwards she stood looking with great pensiveness out of the
window, stood so for a long while; and I fancy there was a softer glow
than ever in her soft-glowing eyes, and perhaps a livelier rose in her
pale-rose cheeks.

"What are you thinking so deeply about?" Frau Brandt asked by-and-by.

Maria Dolores woke with a little start, and turned from the window, and
laughed again.

"Oh, thinking about my cobbler's son, of course," she said.