ntleman. But now they know my address, and
they think that is as much as to say that I will go and be a model for
any one who wants me."

"Didn't you like Herr Rossel?"

"No. Not at all. He doesn't look in the least as if he were an artist,
and wanted to study from a model. He made such big eyes--No! I sent him
off with a flea in his ear. And then he went to Pepi to get her to
persuade me. But she knows me. She went to him herself, for she thought
he would just as soon have one as another. But he only gave her a
gulden and sent her away again, saying that he had no time just then,
and that he happened to particularly want red hair. Then she flew out
again about red. I have heard though that Herr Rossel lives like a
prince, and Pepi said that if I were not a fool--at that time she was
not so down on me--I might make my fortune."

"But are you going to continue such a fool all your life long, Zenz?"

"I don't know," replied she, frankly. "Nobody is sure of herself when
she is young and has plenty of time on her hands. But I think as long
as I have my five senses about me--"

She hesitated.

"Well, Zenz?" he asked, taking one of her little hands, with its
fingers' ends roughened by work, in one of his.

"So long," she said, quietly, "I will not do such a thing to please
anyone whom I do not love."

"And how must the man look whom you could love? Only like Herr Jansen?"

She laughed. "Oh! no. He is so much older than I. I only like him in
just the same way that I might have liked my father. He must be younger
and very nice, and--"

She stopped abruptly, looked askance at him, a little coquettishly, and
said: "But what nonsense we are talking! Won't you eat and drink
something, or has the scarecrow next you there taken away all your
appetite!"

She glanced disapprovingly at his neighbors, who looked, with their
nodding cap-borders and strait-laced Sunday suits, for all the world
like stuffed dolls, and did not understand a word of what had been said
by the other two.

"Zenz," said Felix, without answering her; "do you know you could stop
over night in my quarters just as well as not? I have two rooms: you
could bolt the door between them if you should feel any fear of me, and
each room has a separate entrance. What do you think about it?"

"You are only joking!" she hastily replied, without the slightest
embarrassment; "you would never think of encumbering yourself with such
a poor, ugly thing as I am."

"