about it; and spoke also of the old days on the
Andreasberg, when began the love that in one of their hearts at least
never had grown cold. And for this old love's sake Andreas promised that
when she was gone the little Rosehen should find a home with him and
with his birds. It was not a great while after this promise was made
that the end came.

Some of the women laughed a little, and cried a little too, when, after
the funeral, old Andreas--for so already had they begun to call him,
because of his silent habit and quaint, old-fashioned ways--asked to be
shown how a baby should be carried; and, being in this matter properly
instructed, bore away with careful tenderness in his arms the little
Rosehen to her new home. And when he was come home with her, the birds,
as though in welcome--which seemed the more real because certain of the
tamer ones among them came forth from their open cages and perched upon
his arm--

[Illustration: Chorus of sweetest song 268]

The good-wives living thereabouts were somewhat shocked at the thought
of risking a baby's life in the care of a man who was qualified only to
minister intelligently to the needs of baby canary-birds; yet were they
not a little touched when they came--in unnecessary numbers, as Andreas
thought--to give him the benefit of their superior wisdom in the
premises by finding how well, in a queer, awkward way, he was
discharging the duties of his office; and such gentleness in a man they
all vowed that they had never seen. Yet it was not surprising that his
quaint effort was crowned with so signal a success; as the birds could
have explained, had their song-notes been rendered into human speech,
Andreas had served an apprenticeship in caring for them which well
fitted him to care with a mother's tenderness for this little girl, who,
such was his love for her, seemed to him in all verity to be his own
proper child. Benefiting by the advice which so lavishly was bestowed
upon him, he presently became--as even the most critical of the women
were forced to admit--a much better mother to the little Roschen than
many a real mother might have been. It was, indeed, a sight worth
travelling far to see, this of Andreas washing and dressing the baby
in the sunny room at the back of the shop where hung the cages in which
were the choicest of his birds. Roschen's first conscious memory was
of laughing and splashing in her little tub in the sunshine, while all
around her was a carol