requently, and with a frank
friendliness, was the handsome young assistant baker at the Cafe
Nuernberger; a very capable young fellow, Hans Kuhn by name, who of late
had brought that excellent bakery into great vogue because of the almost
miraculously good lebkuchen which he baked there. But Andreas was not at
all alarmed by this open friendship; for Hans and the stout Minna Brekel
were to be married presently, and Roschen's feeling obviously was no
more than hearty good-will towards the lover of her dear sister-friend.
Fine chatterings she and Minna had, as Andreas inferred from her
occasional brief reports of them, about the prodigious matrimonial event
that was so near at hand. As Andreas also inferred, these chatterings
put various notions of an exciting and somewhat disturbing sort into
Roschen's little head. If one young girl might get married, so might
another, no doubt she thought; and it is conceivable that from this
mental statement of a rational abstract possibility her thoughts may
have passed on to consideration of the concrete possibilities involved
in her own relations with the good-looking Gustav Strauss, son of the
rich bird-dealer, or with the good-looking young shoemaker, Ludwig
Bauer, who lived next door but one.

It is certain that when Roschen had arrived at the dignity of eighteen
years, and her hitherto slim figure had taken on quite a plump, pleasing
womanly roundness, the business visits of the young Herr Strauss to the
little bird shop on the East Side became, as it struck Andreas, rather
curiously frequent. And about this time, also, their neighbor Ludwig
developed a very extraordinary interest in the business of raising
canary-birds. It was a business that he long had thought of engaging in,
he explained; and he truly did exhibit an aptitude in comprehending
and in practising its mysteries that greatly exalted him in the little
bird-dealer's esteem. The birds all seemed to recognize a friend in him;
and even those which were but partially tamed, and were gentle only with
Andreas himself, would perch willingly upon his hand. With Andreas
it long had been a maxim that canary-birds were rare judges of human
character, and the testimonial thus given to Lud-wig's worth counted
with him for a great deal--as did also the quite converse opinion of the
birds in regard to the young Herr Strauss: from whom, notwithstanding
his training in the care of their kind, they always flew away, and whose
mere pr