Winnie gave me a quick look. "You don't usually preach, Tib," she said, and burst into a merry round of stories and jokes, which convulsed the other girls, but did not in the least deceive me. I could see that she was troubled, and was trying to carry it off by riding her high horse. "Girls," she said, "I want you to come around to the butcher's with me. They have such funny little beasts in the window. I mean to get one, and the butcher's boy, Wilhelm, is such a princely creature—just my beau idéal—I want you to see him."
The funny little beasts proved to be forms of head-cheese in fancy shapes. Strange roosters and ducks, with plumage of gayly colored sugar icing, and animals of uncouth forms and colors. Winnie bought a small pig with a blue nose and green tail, all the while bombarding the butcher's boy, who was a particularly stupid specimen, with keen questions and witty sallies. He was so very obtuse that he did not even see that she was making sport of him.
As we hurried home to make up for our little escapade, Winnie amused us all by asking us how we thought Wilhelm would grace a princely station. "Just imagine, for an instant, that he was the lost Prince Paradiso! What a figure he would cut in chain armor, or in a court costume of velvet and jewels! Did you notice the elegance of his manners and the brilliancy of his wit?"
"Winnie, Winnie, have you gone wild?" Adelaide asked. "Why do you make such sport of the poor fellow? He is well enough where he is, I am sure."
"Is he not?" Winnie replied, a little more soberly; "I was only thinking what a mercy it is that people are so well fitted for their stations in life by nature. Now, think of Jim as a butcher, growing up to chop sausage-meat and skewer roasts!"
"Jim never could be a butcher," Adelaide replied; "even if Miss Prillwitz's dreams do not come true, the education she is giving him will do no harm. He will carve a future for himself."
We went into the house, and the subject was dropped. The next morning a message came from Miss Prillwitz that one of the Hetterman children was sick. It was the fever, contracted in their old home, and we were told that our botany lessons must be interrupted for the present. We heard through Mrs. Hetterman that the child was not very sick. It was one of the chubby little ones that had looked so well. She was quarantined now in Jim's room, the green one up under the roof, and had a trained nurse to care for her. Mrs. Hetterman did not see the child, but talked with her daughter Mary in the basement every evening She thought it was a great mercy that they had completed their moving before the child was taken sick. This did not seem to me to be exactly generous to Miss Prillwitz, but I could not blame the mother for the feeling, for under the careful treatment the child speedily weathered the storm, and came out looking only a little paler for the confinement. We were expecting a summons to return to our lessons, when Mrs. Hetterman told us that Jim was sick. We were not greatly alarmed, for the little girl's illness had been so slight that we fancied we would see our favorite about in a fortnight.
Milly sent in baskets of white grapes and flowers, and Adelaide carried over a beautiful set of photographs of Italian architecture. "It may amuse him to look them over," she said, "and it is just possible that his ancestral palace figures among them."
Adelaide hoped to go to Europe as soon as she graduated. "If Jim is established in his rights by that time, I shall visit him," she said, "so, you see, I am only mercenary in my attentions to him now."
Winnie looked up indignantly, "Then you deserve to be disappointed."