"Ma foi," said Pinac, "he shall tell himself if he wants to. If not, he shall not!"
Fico's reply was characteristic of that Italian's sunny disposition, and it inverted a familiar saying.
"What the hell we care, so long as he is happy," he said.
Poons loved Von Barwig as a son, but the best of sons are self-centred when they are in love; and Poons saw nothing.
Jenny was silent, she felt that she had lost her dear professor, but with that spirit of sacrifice of which woman alone is capable, she resigned her place in his heart to another. Be it said to her credit there was not a jealous pang, not a moment of envy, nothing but mournful regret and sweet resignation to the inevitable. As a mother gives her son to another woman in marriage, so did Jenny give up Von Barwig; to whom she knew not, nor did she seek to know.
His secret was sacred to all his friends, all, save one, and this solitary exception led to a slight change in the Houston Street establishment. It came about as follows:
"When a man comes home with orchids pinned to his coat," confided Mrs. Mangenborn to her friend Miss Husted, "it looks as if it was only a question of time when he would move uptown into more elegant apartments. Orchids in winter only goes with blue diamonds and yellowbacks!"
Miss Husted shook her head. "Move upstairs more likely than uptown," replied that lady regretfully. "Why, the poor old gentleman don't even get enough to eat. You mark my word for it, some day he's going to keel over! Only yesterday morning I had to beg him almost on my bended knees to join us at dinner and then he only came in to oblige me. He ate scarcely anything, poor dear!"
"Does he pay regularly?" inquired Mrs. Mangenborn, with a lack of sympathy noted by her friend.
"As regularly as clockwork," snapped Miss Husted. "Half price, but how long will he be able to pay even that? Only three pupils, and only one of them pays him in cash. Oh, how people round here have changed since I first came here; how much they do expect for their money nowadays!"