As we were going back to the hotel, Mrs. Stanhope said to Aunt Clarissa, “Did you notice the resemblance?  Doesn’t he look at you out of his big brown eyes just as my Philo did?” Aunt Clarissa saw the likeness too, and said that was the reason that she took a fancy to Fani the moment she saw him.  You see, Philo was Nora’s little brother.  In the evening, Mrs. Stanhope spoke several times about the likeness, and it was the first time that she had talked with us at all.  All that night I kept thinking it was too good to be true; it must be a dream; but the next morning, when we got to the railroad station, there was Fani, and he had been waiting three hours, ever since six o’clock.  Mrs. Stanhope laughed a little at his impatience—­it was the first time she had laughed at all.

All day long we travelled in the railway carriage, and Fani was as happy as he could be.  When we stopped at a station, and Aunt Clarissa was going to get out and fetch us something to eat, Mrs. Stanhope stopped her and said:  “No, no; we have an escort now, he must wait upon us.”  Then she explained to Fani what he was to do, and you ought to have seen how he ran about and did it all so handily, and he kept looking at Mrs. Stanhope to see if she was pleased; and she was pleased, that was plain enough.  In the evening we stopped at Mainz on the Rhine, and Mrs. Stanhope said we should see the river in the morning.  And the next day, what do you think? we went on a splendid steamboat; no one can possibly understand it without seeing it.  Fani was like a crazy creature all day, he was so wild with delight; and Mrs. Stanhope let him run about all over the boat and look at everything.  Sometimes I didn’t see him for an hour at a time!  By and by he came and took your present, and said he was going to draw everything that he had seen, and just how the whole boat was arranged, so that he should never forget it.  And he wants me to thank you a great deal for the beautiful present.  I forgot to say that before.

In the evening, when we left the boat, we found a carriage and a wagon waiting for us.  We drove for half an hour or more, and then we came to Mrs. Stanhope’s house.  It is a large house, standing in the middle of a garden, and with large trees about it.  When we got out of the carriage, Fani whispered to me, “Do you suppose I shall work in the stables or in the garden?” Of course I couldn’t tell him; I did not even know what I was to do myself.  But nothing has turned out as we thought it would.  At first Mrs. Stanhope was so sad that we did not see her at all for three days.  Aunt Clarissa was just as kind as she could be.  She took us all about the garden and showed us the place where Philo was buried; a white cross stands there with his name on it.  And Nora was buried by his side, under a big linden.

On the fourth day Mrs. Stanhope came to table with us, and after dinner she talked very kindly with us, and said that now it was time