When Thea opened the gate, old Mrs. Kohler was just
coming in from the chicken yard, with five fresh eggs in her apron and a
pair of old top-boots on her feet. She called Thea to come and look at a
bantam egg, which she held up proudly. Her bantam hens were remiss in
zeal, and she was always delighted when they accomplished anything. She
took Thea into the sitting-room, very warm and smelling of food, and
brought her a plateful of little Christmas cakes, made according to old
and hallowed formulae, and put them before her while she warmed her
feet. Then she went to the door of the kitchen stairs and called: "Herr
Wunsch, Herr Wunsch!"

Wunsch came down wearing an old wadded jacket, with a velvet collar. The
brown silk was so worn that the wadding stuck out almost everywhere. He
avoided Thea's eyes when he came in, nodded without speaking, and
pointed directly to the piano stool. He was not so insistent upon the
scales as usual, and throughout the little sonata of Mozart's she was
studying, he remained languid and absent-minded. His eyes looked very
heavy, and he kept wiping them with one of the new silk handkerchiefs
Mrs. Kohler had given him for Christmas. When the lesson was over he did
not seem inclined to talk. Thea, loitering on the stool, reached for a
tattered book she had taken off the music-rest when she sat down. It was
a very old Leipsic edition of the piano score of Gluck's "Orpheus." She
turned over the pages curiously.

"Is it nice?" she asked.

"It is the most beautiful opera ever made," Wunsch declared solemnly.
"You know the story, eh? How, when she die, Orpheus went down below for
his wife?"

"Oh, yes, I know. I didn't know there was an opera about it, though. Do
people sing this now?"

"ABER JA! What else? You like to try? See." He drew her from the stool
and sat down at the piano. Turning over the leaves to the third act, he
handed the score to Thea. "Listen, I play it through and you get the
RHYTHMUS. EINS, ZWEI, DREI, VIER." He played through Orpheus' lament,
then pushed back his cuffs with awakening interest and nodded at Thea.
"Now, VOM BLATT, MIT MIR."

"ACH, ICH HABE SIE VERLOREN, ALL' MEIN GLUCK IST NUN DAHIN."

Wunsch sang the aria with much feeling. It was evidently one that was
very dear to him.

"NOCH EINMAL, alone, yourself." He played the introductory measures,
then nodded at her vehemently, and she began:--

"ACH, ICH HABE SIE VERLOREN."

When she finished, Wunsch nodded ag