The very next day Vanderlyn appeared, to M'riar's satisfaction and
Anna's fluttering joy. He was most respectful, plainly very anxious to
be of further service to her and her father. She felt a little guilty
because she had sent M'riar with the address--if her father had not
left it he certainly had failed to for no other purpose than
preventing Vanderlyn from getting it--but surely it was right for her
to be good friends with one who wished to be so kind to him and her!
An hour passed most delightfully in that earnest conversation about
little which engages young folk of their age and suffering from the
complaint which ailed them both.

"But I really had a solemn, sober errand to attend to when I came," he
said, at length. "My mother fell in love with you." (He wished he
might have told her that her son had, also.) "She is anxious to see
more of you." (He did not tell her that the reason was his mother's
firm conviction that her father certainly was a distinguished person
in hard luck, incog.) "This summer, while she was in Europe, she found
that she was sadly handicapped by knowing almost nothing of the German
language. She wants to know if you won't come to her and teach her.
You could also be her friend, you know; a sort of young companion to a
lonely woman." He was making it sound as attractive as he could. He
had devised the scheme with earnest care, had brought his mother round
to eagerness for it with cautious difficulty, and now presented it
with diffidence and fear to the delightful girl he loved.

"I teach?" said Anna, delighted by the thought of being able, thus, to
help her father, and, at the same time, not utterly averse to anything
which would make frequent glimpses of her knight-errant an easy
certainty. "I don't know if I _could_ teach."