"Yah; sure we love her," Kreutzer answered heartily and patted the child's head. "We love her much."
"My heye!" said M'riar, happily, her sorrows quickly vanishing. "'Ow much nicer New York his than Lunnon!"
It was with the grace of an old cavalier that Kreutzer led his daughter to the table, and called her attention to the little feast he had prepared.
The small display of goodies would have seemed poor enough had she compared it to the everyday "light luncheons" at the Vanderlyns', but she did not so compare it. Back to the old days of modest plenty which they had known in London, to the days of almost actual need which they had known in New York City, went her mind, for its comparison, and thus she found the feast magnificent. With real fervor she exclaimed above it. Her pleasure was so genuine that the old flute-player was delighted. "How splendid!" she cried honestly.
Having placed her in her chair he began, at once, in the confusion of his joy, to cut the cake, ignoring, utterly, the chicken. She did not call attention to his absent-mindedness.
"It looks almost like a wedding cake!" said she and laughed—but then, suddenly, there flooded back on her remembrance of the secret she must tell him before she left the tenement that afternoon. It sobered her. How would he take the news that she had not been content to wait for him to bring to her his wonderful "brave gentleman?"
"Ah, you are thinking about weddings!" he said genially, still cutting at the cake. For an instant she imagined that she had aroused suspicions, but, quickly, she saw plainly that he was but lightly jesting. "Have a care, my Anna! Have a care!"
Suddenly her heart was filled with resolution. When would there be a better time than now in which to tell him her sweet secret? It could not be that he would be so very angry. His love for her, his longing that she might be happy, were, she knew, too great for that. And, later, when he knew Jack Vanderlyn as well as she had come to know him, he would realize, as she did, that nowhere in the world, not in the castles of the barons on the Rhine, not in the palaces of kings, could he or anyone find more genuine gentility than in this free-born unpretending young American.
"Father!" she said timidly.
"My girl," said he, without the least suspicion that her heart could, really, be touched by anyone in this cold land of crude democracy, "you must always come and tell me if your heart begins to flutter like a little bird. You—"