"No, I don't. I meant, to hear you—I went to the concert, but I enjoyed you most."
"Ah!" he chuckled at the flattery, and let me in, and taking a survey of me, invited me to come and have a bit of supper with him, which I accepted. His wife came in and waited on us, and he told her what I had said, with pleasure, and she laughed over it and rallied him and accepted it, and accepted me instantly as an old friend. It gave me a new feeling.
A few minutes later there was another arrival. A knock on the street door, and the mother, smiling and winking at her husband, went and let in the newcomers: a plump, round-cheeked girl, the mingled likeness of her two parents, with red cheeks, blue eyes, smooth flaxen hair and that heifer-like look of shyness and content which Teuton maidens have, and behind her a strapping looking young fellow with powerful shoulders, and a neck cased in a net of muscles, a clear pink skin and blue eyes, and with a roll in his gait partly the effect of his iron muscles and partly of mere bashfulness. I was introduced and the first thing the mother did was to repeat delightedly the compliment I had paid the father. It had gone home, and the simple way the white teeth shone around that little circle and the pride the whole family took in this poor bit of praise, told their simplicity and warmed my heart. The father and mother were evidently pleased with their daughter's young man—for the mother constantly rallied the daughter about Otto and Otto about her, drawing the father in with sly looks and knowing tosses of her head, and occasionally glancing at me to see if I too took in the situation. Although I did not yet know a word of their language, I could understand perfectly what she was saying, and I never passed an evening that gave me a better idea of family happiness, or greater satisfaction. When I went up to my little room I seemed, somehow, to have gotten into a world of reality and content: a new world.
I awaked in a new world—the one I had reached the night before: the land of hope and content—and when I came down-stairs I was as fresh as a shriven soul, and I walked out into the street with Dix at my heel, as though I owned the earth.
The morning was as perfect as though God had just created light. The sky was as blue and the atmosphere as clear as though the rain that had fallen had washed away with the smoke all impurity whatsoever, and scoured the floor of Heaven afresh.
Elsa, with her chequered skirt turned back and a white apron about her comely figure, was singing as she polished the outer steps, before going to her work in a box factory, and the sun was shining upon her bare head with its smooth hair, and upon the little rose-bush by the door, turning the rain-drops that still hung on it into jewels. She stopped and petted Dix, who had followed me down-stairs, and Dix, who, like his master, loved to be petted by a pretty woman, laid back his ears and rubbed his head against her. And, an hour later, a group of little muddy boys with their books in their hands had been beguiled by a broad puddle on their way to school and were wading in the mud and laughing over the spatters and splotches they were getting on their clothes and ruddy faces. As I watched them, one who had been squeezed out of the fun and stood on the sidewalk looking on and laughing, suddenly seized with fear or envy shouted that if they did "not come on, Mith Thelly would keep them in"; and, stricken with a sudden panic, the whole flock of little sand-pipers started off and ran as hard as their dumpy legs would carry them around the corner. I seemed to be emancipated.
I made my breakfast on a one-cent loaf of bread, taking a little street which, even in that section, was a back street, to eat it in, and for butter amused myself watching a lot of little children (among the last of whom I recognized my muddy boys, who must have found another puddle) lagging in at the door of a small old frame building, which I knew must be their school, though I could not understand why it should be in such a shanty when all the public schools I had seen were the most palatial structures.
I took the trouble to go by that day and look at the house on the corner. It was as sunny as ever. And when on my way back to my office I passed Miss Leigh, the central figure of a group of fresh looking girls, I felt that the half shy smile of recognition which she gave me was a shaft of light to draw my hopes to something better than I had known. Dix was with me, and he promptly picked out his friend and received from her a greeting which, curiously enough, raised my hopes out of all reason. I began to feel that the dog was a link between us.