t and as pretty an establishment
as could be found anywhere upon the whole round globe. Whoever entered
the little shop was greeted with such a thrilling and warbling of sweet
notes that all the air seemed quivering with music, and the leader of
the bird choir was a certain wonderful songster that Andreas had named
the Kronprinz, and for which he repeatedly had refused quite fabulous
sums. Andreas himself had bred the Kronprinz, and had given him the
education that now made him such a wonder among birds, and that made
him also of such great value as an instructor of the young birds whose
musical education was still to be gained. After his adopted daughter,
Andreas held this bird, and justly, to be the most precious thing that
he owned.

But far sweeter than the singing of the prized Kronprinz--at least, to
any but a bird-fancier's ears--was the singing that usually was to be
heard above the trilling of the canaries, and that came from the room
at the back of the shop where Roschen was engaged in her housewifely
duties. It was such music as the angels made, Andreas declared, yet
thinking most of all of one angel voice, the memory of which while still
on earth was very dear to him; and even in the case of those who were
moved by no tender association of the sweet tones of the living and the
dead this estimate of Roschen's singing did not seem unduly high. Gustav
Strauss, the son of the great bird-dealer over in the rich part of the
town, vowed that Andreas was entirely right in his angelic comparison;
and Ludwig Bauer, the young shoemaker, who lived next door but one, went
even further, and said that Hoschen's voice was as much sweeter than any
mere angel's voice as Roschen herself was sweeter and better than all
the angels in Paradise combined. There was nothing halting nor half-way
in Ludwig Bauer's opinion in this matter, it will be observed.

The little room wherein Roschen sang so sweetly while at her work was
their kitchen and dining-room and parlor all in one. As noon-time drew
near there would come out into the shop from this room, through the open
door-way, such succulent and enticing odors of roasting pork and stewing
onions and boiling cabbages, that even Bielfrak--as the Spitz dog,
who was chained as a guard close beneath the cage of the Kronprinz,
appropriately was named--would fall to licking his chops as he hungrily
sniffed these smells delectable; and Andreas suddenly would discover
how hungry he was, and