"His carriage!" echoed the crowd, and fell back amazed, unwilling to trust their own ears.
"With four white horses attached to it," added Mrs. Langohr with a triumphant laugh. "A girl from our suburb, imagine!"
"Hump! that's a greater miracle than the stories of the returning Pilgrims from Rome," sniffed an old, wrinkled woman, shaking her ludicrously shaped head with a certain vehemence and "soit disant" dignity which eminently befitted one enjoying the reputation of the female Socrates of the suburb.
The nightcaps at the windows commenced to shake visibly, and a heated argument of possible reasons for this exciting event followed.
"What will he do with her?" asked the female Socrates with solemnity, wiping each wrinkle separately with a dubious-looking red handkerchief, a sign that she intended to cross-examine everybody rigidly.
"What he—the Duke will do? He will make a great singer out of her, smarty," sneered the next-door neighbor, disappearing quickly indoors, to the great disappointment of the neighbors who had gathered for the purpose of hearing the great news at first hand with all the details.
"A great singer?" asked the shaky nightcaps at the windows, with dubious smiles, ignorant of what had gone before, and looking in blank amazement at each other. "Who—who is he?"
But so it had actually happened.
Christine had attracted first the attention, then the interest of Duke Hohenlohe, and had been placed in the Vienna Conservatory of Music. Here, as a protege of one of its principal patrons, she was being carefully instructed by the most prominent singing teachers of the institution, and making extraordinary progress.
But poor Peter! He had become so downcast at the loss of his little friend, that he cared nothing for even the merriest of his former pranks, and spent his time in counting the days until he could see her again. He had promised Christine before she had gone to the Conservatory, to help her family in every way he could, and what Peter promised, he kept faithfully. But, oh! how dear Christine had become to him—how necessary to his very existence! He gladly deprived himself of even the barest necessities of life in order to be of service to her and the mother and sisters she loved.