"Why, it's a cinch," said the enthusiastic lover. "I don't think she
will be slow to learn. She'll work hard, mother will; she didn't like
this summer's trip too well. The crowned-heads didn't tip their crowns
and bow as she went by."

"You are mistake," said Anna gravely. "Kings do not wear their crowns
upon the streets."

He laughed. "You see how much we've got to learn?" he asked. "May I
tell my mother that you'll come?"

"I shall ask my father," Anna answered.

Reluctantly, after a week, Herr Kreutzer gave consent. He was afraid
he might not hold the place in the beer-garden. He hated the cheap
rag-time music which the man insisted on and had held his temper with
much difficulty, when he had been reproved for playing "hymns" because
he had, for solos, interspersed a worthy number now and then. With his
tenure of that place uncertain, not sure that he could find another,
he felt that he would have no right to interpose too serious
objections to the highly flattering arrangement Mrs. Vanderlyn
proposed. His worry about Vanderlyn subsided, somewhat, when he found
the young man was away from town much of the time.

The little tenement-house apartment was a lonely place, when he was
there, after Anna took up her new work and could come to it but once a
week and M'riar was a comfort to him. An astonishing companionship
grew up between the strangely differing pair. To save his ears he
taught her something about singing; to save her pride from gibings