"What did your father do, there?"
"He played first-flute in an orchestra—a theatre."
"Did he never go back to his home—his native land—to Germany, you know, to see his relatives?"
"I think he has no relatives alive."
"Did you never ask him about that?"
"If he had wish to tell me—if there had been some for to tell about—he would have told me without asking. I never thought of asking questions about such a thing."
"It's very funny!" Mrs. Vanderlyn said somewhat pettishly. "I could have sworn, from the first time I saw your father on the steamer, that he was a man of family."
"Of family? No; Mrs. Vanderlyn, I think not so."
"And he has never told you anything?"
"He has told me, sometimes, that by and by, when something happens which he never will explain, we would go back to Germany."