The girl, who had been moving restlessly about the room all this time, with her wild brown eyes fixed now on Ronald, now on the old man, and oftener in a shy, inquisitive stare on the corpse, lit a dusty chemical lamp and led the way down the awkward passages and stairs. Ronald tried to start a conversation with her as he followed.
“You are too young, my birdling, to be accustomed to such sights as this upstairs.”
“Birdling is not too young, she’s almost fourteen,” said the girl, proudly. “And she likes it, too; it makes her think of mother. Mother went to sleep on that table, mein Herr.”
“Poor thing! she’s half-witted,” thought Wyde as he passed into the street. “By-by, birdie.”
Home he walked briskly, to be met under his flaming balcony by Lottchen’s kindly afternoon greeting. How had mein Herr passed his Sabbath? she asked.
“Quietly enough, Lottchen. I met an old philosopher in the God’s-Acre, and went home with him to his shop. Have you ever heard of Herr Doctor Lebensfunke?”
“Yes, mein Herr. Wrong here, they say;” and she tapped her wide, round German forehead, and lifted her eyes expressively heavenward.
“Sold himself to the devil, eh?” asked Wyde.
Lottchen was not quite sure on that point. Some said one thing, and some another. There was undoubtedly a devil, else how could good Doctor Luther have thrown his inkstand at him? But he had never been seen in Doctor Lebensfunke’s neighborhood; and, on the whole, Lottchen was inclined to attribute the Herr Doctor’s trouble to an indefinable something whose nature was broadly hinted at by more tapping of the forehead.
Ronald Wyde mounted the stairs, locked himself in his room, and wished himself out of the scrape he was getting into. But, being in for it now, he lit a cigar, and tried to fancy the processes he would have to go through, and how he, a natty and respectable young fellow, would look and feel in a drunkard’s skin. His conjectures being too foggily outlined to please him, he put them aside, and waited impatiently enough for ten o’clock.