g."

"I wonder what he wants," mused Roger. "He's been hanging round for a
long time."

"Pass the biscuits, Ernest," from Papa Wolf. "The cake is very bad,
Mamma."

"Oh, Papa, is it? And I took such trouble!" The distress in the gentle
voice made Roger scowl.

"In America, Papa," Elsa's voice was mocking, "where you have lived for
some forty years, it is not considered courteous to criticize the food
at the table."

"Hush, Elschen! Papa can say what he wishes, always, to me. Is it not
so, Karl?"

Papa Wolf pushed away his plate, wiped his mustache and leaned back in
his chair with a smile and a sigh of repletion.

"You spoil us all, Mamma!" he exclaimed. "Elsa, Uncle Hugo comes
to-night and we will have a little music. You will give up choir
practice, just for once."

Ernest glanced at his sister apprehensively. She flushed resentfully.
"But I must go, Papa!" she cried. "I take the salary the church pays me.
I must sing well."

"Laughing and flirting with the new bass is not practice," returned
Papa. "You stay at home to-night, Elschen."

Elsa glanced at Ernest, who shrugged his shoulders. Then she gave a long
look at her father with eyes that were black with anger.

"Papa, I'm going to choir practice," she insisted.

Her father brought his fist down on the table. "Am I or am I not master
in my own house?" he shouted. "Elsa, what you have needed was a German
upbringing. You will stay at home to-night and make music with Hugo and
me."

"Papa," said Elsa slowly, "I am twenty-nine years old and I can't endure
this sort of thing much longer. Mother and I are just unpaid servants
for--"

"Elsa! Bitte! Bitte sehr!" exclaimed Mother Wolf.

Elsa's dark look went to her mother, then to Roger, who was still
scowling. Her lips trembled. She shrugged her shoulders and rising began
to clear the table.

The three men went into the library and lighted their pipes. Papa Wolf,
having with much difficulty persuaded his meerschaum to draw, parted his
coat-tails and settled himself on the piano stool. Then he threw his
head back while he touched a few quiet chords. He had a beautiful,
massive head. Roger, ensconced in a deep Morris chair, thought, as he
had thought many times before, that it was a head that should have
belonged to an artist rather than to a dry goods merchant. The chords
merged into a quiet melody. Ernest buried his head in the evening paper.
Roger let his pipe go out and his face settled into lines