"To yer house? My name is Peter," he replied, greatly bewildered, as he could not think—to save his soul—of anything more important than his name.
"Yes, to my house; and then you can go with me and carry the violin," Christine answered with a sweet smile. But suddenly, ashamed of her boldness, she stopped and counted her kreutzers again.
Peter, however, looked at her with such admiration in his big blue eyes, that something like an electric spark shot through her. Such a happy sensation she had never felt; for no one had ever spoken such kind, encouraging words to her. A tinge of red leaped into her pale cheeks; there was a trembling pant in her voice, when, with averted face, she told him the street and number. Tucking her violin under her arm, she ran quickly up the street.
At the nearest bakery she stopped in order to buy the coveted rolls. But Peter, still under the charm of her large, expressive eyes, stood as if rooted to the ground, gazing after her and listening to the receding tap-tap of the little shoes on her feet, which he now realized belonged to some one else. He began to dread the expected punishment, which he knew would be meted out, not so much in curtain lectures as in striking actions, and for some time he stood stock still, racking his brain for an excuse to make their singular disappearance plausible. But his natural light-heartedness soon got the better of him. Shrugging his shoulders, and singing "Piff, paff, pouff, brennet sie," he rushed away, ready to meet his inexorable fate.
II.
"Goodness! you haven't eaten anything all day long, and I bet you're feeble," cried Mrs. Langohr, the next-door neighbor of Christine's mother, throwing the door of her miserable two-room apartment wide open, so that all the neighbors should hear, and praise her charitable inclinations. "O, my God, have mercy on them poor little worms! I must go and make a little farina soup for 'em. See, that's what I am getting out of the Bible! Be good to yer neighbor," she said in a loud tone, apparently for the benefit of the poorly-clad and shy-looking women at the windows.
"O, holy Father in Heaven! Just look here," she screamed, amazed when Christine suddenly appeared with twenty hot rolls in her apron, showing them triumphantly to the neighbors. And rushing into the apartment, she, with a gladdened heart, distributed them among the starving children.