ags about the meerschaum pipe which the seducer of
his own daughter gives him as a birthday present! Why, if I thought that
you had had any idea of this abomination, I would sweep you out of this
room with the very broom with which I now sweep up the fragments of your
pipe."

Mr. Meyer was very much upset by this language. He got up without
answering a word, put on his hat, and went, first of all, to the shop of
Messrs. Flesz and Huber, to find out how much his daughter had spent
there. It turned out to be considerably more than three hundred florins.
Aunt Teresa was certainly well-informed.

Thence he proceeded to the theatre, and inquired what his daughter's
salary was. The manager had no need to consult his books about it. He
told Mr. Meyer straight out that his daughter was paid sixteen florins,
but she did not earn it, for she was very backward in learning--in fact,
she made no progress at all; nor did she seem to care very much, for she
never appeared at any of the rehearsals, and her salary went for the
most part in paying fines.

This was a little too much. Mr. Meyer was beside himself with rage. He
rushed wildly home. Fortunately, he made such a row when he burst into
the house that the other members of the family had time to get Matilda
out of his way, so that he had to be content with disinheriting his
abandoned daughter on the spot, and forbidding her, under pain of
extermination, ever to appear beneath his roof again. A tiger could not
have been more furious, and in the pitilessness of his rage he commanded
that her accursed name should never be mentioned in his presence, and
threatened to send packing after the minx whoever had the audacity to
defend her.

His merciless humour lasted for a whole week. Very often his tongue
itched to ask a question or two, but he stifled the rising words, and
still kept silence. At last, one day, as they all sat together at
dinner, not a single member of the family could touch a thing--then Mr.
Meyer could stand it no longer.

"What's the matter with you all?" he cried. "Why don't you eat? What's
the meaning of all this blubbering?"

The girls raised their handkerchiefs to their eyes, and blubbered more
than ever; but his wife, loudly sobbing, replied--

"My daughter is dying!"

"Naturally!" replied her husband, thrusting such a large spoonful of
pudding into his mouth that he nearly choked. "'Tis easy to say that,
but it is not so easy to die!"

"It would be be