Hunne sat looking thoughtfully at the rescued party, and at last accosted Jule, who was walking back and forth on the gravel path: 

“Look here, Jule, what will the ‘dreadful end’ be like?”

“Oh it may be anything, Hunne.  You see they have tried fire and water, and next they will pull the house down about our ears, I dare say.  Then we shall lie under the ruins, and it will be all over with us.”

“Shan’t we be able to jump up quick, and get out of the way?” asked Hunne, anxiously.

“We may; unless the twins should be seized with their great idea in the middle of the night.”

“You’ll wake me up then Jule, won’t you?” asked the little fellow pleadingly.

Mrs. Kurd had come running at the repeated summons of Aunt Ninette, just as Battiste had gone to save the patriarchs of the flood with his bean-pole; and when she reached her, the tumult was stilled.

“Did you hear that, Mrs. Kurd?  It was frightful!  Everything is quiet now, and I hope they are saved!”

“Oh yes, of course,” said Mrs. Kurd, quite unconcernedly, “it is only the little ones.  They are always crying out about something.  There isn’t really anything the matter.”

“No; but children’s cries are so shrill; I am shivering all over.  How will my husband stand it?  No; this settles it, Mrs. Kurd.  We shall go away.  This is the last drop.”

With these words Mrs. Ehrenreich hurried into her husband’s room to see how he had borne the shock.  He was sitting at his table, with his ears stopped with cotton wool, and he did not hear his wife come in.  He had stuffed his ears when the first cry came, and had therefore escaped the rest of the hubbub.

“Oh, that is very unhealthy, it is so heating for the head;” cried Aunt Ninette, much distressed.  She pulled the wool from his ears, and announced that she should go directly after the church-service on the morrow, and ask the pastor where they could move to, since this place was unendurable.

This plan suited Uncle Titus as well as any other; all he wanted was quiet.  Aunt Ninette, thinking over her plans, went back to her own room.

Dora stood waiting for her aunt in the passage-way.  “Are we really going away, Aunt?” she asked anxiously.

“Yes, decidedly;” replied Mrs. Ehrenreich, “we shall move on Monday.”

Poor little Dora! it was a sad trial to her, to have to go away without once having a chance to make the acquaintance of the other family; to go into the beautiful garden, to smell those delicious flowers, and to join the merry child-life that she had watched so closely, and yet from which she was so entirely separated.  Her future seemed swallowed up in those stifling cotton shirts that were her fate in dull Karlsruhe.  As she sat on the side of her little bed, that night, sadly cast down by these melancholy thoughts, she forgot the five friendly stars in the sky above.  Yet there they were, sparkling as ever, as if they were trying to speak to their child and say, “Dora, Dora! have you quite forgotten your father’s verses?”