caprice--for she was a motherless child, and Aunt Hedwig
humored her waywardness a trifle more than was good for her--and she
manifested, usually, a certain haughtiness towards those who sought to
make friends with her. Yet of her own accord one day, when Andreas had
ceased to be a stranger to her, she went up to him and offered him a
kiss. Aunt Hedwig volubly explained to Andreas the honor that had been
done him, and from that moment was disposed herself to be most friendly
with him--as was also the baker, and as was also Herr Sohnstein, when
the story of this extraordinary performance duly was related to them.
And thus there began a real friendship between Andreas and these
kindly souls that ever grew riper as the years went on. Sometimes of an
evening, when his birds were all asleep and he was left lonely, Andreas
would step around to the bakery; and would sit for an hour or so in
the little room back of the shop, listening pleasantly to the talk of
Gottlieb and Herr Sohnstein, as they smoked their long pipes, and
even laughing in a quiet way at the merry sallies thrown into the
conversation by Aunt Hedwig as she sat knitting beside the fire.
Andreas himself rarely spoke--it was not his way; but there was such a
sympathetic quality in his silence that his lack of words passed almost
unobserved. Much more attention was attracted by the fact that he did
not smoke--a fact that was looked upon as most extraordinary. But
this also went unheeded after a while, as it well might in a small room
wherein Gottlieb and Herr Sohnstein were smoking with such vigor that
the air was a deep, heavy blue. It was because his birds did not like
smoke that he had given up his pipe, he explained, simply; and only to
Minna did it occur to say, after she had turned the matter over in
her small mind for a while, that the Herr Stoffel must be a
very kind-hearted man to go without smoking because the smell of
tobacco-smoke wasn't nice for his birds.

When Andreas took the little Roschen to his home, that sad day after the
funeral, the good Hedwig was among the first of the womenkind to go to
him with tenders of instruction and advice; for while Hedwig was only,
as it were, a matron by brevet, she was deeply impressed by the extent
of her own knowledge in the matter of how motherless children should be
raised; and it is but just to add that this self-confidence was fully
warranted by the good results that had attended upon her care of her
brothe