“But has the Mees any rich friends?” asked her crony the Frau Doctorin.

And then the parson’s widow laughed in a worldly way.

“So pretty a girl,” she said, “so fine a complexion, such little feet!  And those winning ways!”

From which it will be seen that the Frau Pastorin could admire and appreciate a woman who was young and beautiful.  So could the painters; but that is easier to believe.  And so could the tight-booted lieutenants; but that is perfectly understood.  When Kitty Waring crossed the Hof Garten, even that old woman who years and years ago sold little Heinrich Heine plums would point out the girl to her contemporary the venerable under-gardener.

“HAYbsch” the old woman would growl.

“Aber leichtsinnig—­leichtsinnig,” the old man would add,—­for he was a misogynist.

But Kitty was not quite leichtsinnig, although she did stroll through the garden sometimes with Fritz Goebel, sometimes with Otho Weiss, sometimes with her fellow-countryman Joe Buckley.  They were all young, all painters, all poor.  Who cared what they did?  What if they sat on a beach under a linden-tree and played cat’s-cradle like children?  What if they made little excursions to Zons or to Xanten?  What if there was a supper in Joe Buckley’s studio, and Kitty Waring and Anna van der Meer—­a sedate creature from Rotterdam was she—­were taught how to make a true, good bowl?  Who cared?  In fact, all DAYsseldorf cared.

One day the Frau Pastorin called Kitty into her parlor.  “Dear child,” she began, “if your good mother—­”

“She has been dead fifteen years,” said Kitty.

“If your father—­” continued the Frau Pastorin.

“He?  Oh, I can’t remember him at all,” said Kitty.

“Have you no family?” was the question that the Frau Pastorin put squarely.

“An uncle or two somewhere in Iowa,” Kitty answered.  “An aunt brought me up, and then died, poor thing!” A smile flitted across Kitty’s face, and tears sprang to her eyes; but her questioner saw only the smile.  The world is full of such purblind folk.

“Where were you last night so late?” she said acridly.

Kitty turned on the plump little woman and looked down at her.

“When Miss Smythe told me that I should find a pleasant home here, she made a sad mistake,” was the irrelevant answer that Mees gave.  It puzzled the Frau Pastorin for full a week.  Then Hedwig Vogel and Mees paid their honest debts and took up quarters with Frau Tisch, in the Rosenstrasse.

“It is much pleasanter here,” cried; Kitty, as she moved about the parlor, transforming the commonplace aspect of the room.  “And it is cheap, too.  I thought Frau Tisch would ask more than Frau Raben.”

“It is less because we club together,” said FrA¤ulein Vogel.