“It is very nice of you, M’riarr.  I am fond of you, M’riarr.”

“I knows yer is; I knows yer is,” said M’riar.  “Tyke me with yer, won’t yer, Miss?”

“Oh, I couldn’t take you with me,” Anna answered, as she laid a kind, if queenly hand upon the poor thing’s cheek.  “But you must let me know just where you are at all times, and, perhaps, some day, I will send you something to remind you of me.”

“Hi won’t need nothink ter remind me, Miss,” said M’riar.  “Hi’ll remember yer, hall right.”

The next morning came a four-wheeled cab up to the dingy door, to the vast amazement of the other lodgers, and, indeed, the entire neighborhood.  Into this Herr Kreutzer handed his delightful daughter with as much consideration as a minister could show a queen, and then, with courtly bows, climbed in himself, having, with much ceremony, bade the landlady adieu.  Anna cast a keen glance all about, expecting a last glimpse of M’riar, but had none and was grieved.  So soon do the affections of the lower classes fade!

After the cab started, the Herr Kreutzer carefully pulled down the blinds a little way, on both side windows, so that the inside of the cab was dark enough to make it impossible for wayfarers to note who was within.

“Father,” said Anna, curiously, “why do you pull down the blinds?”

“Er—­er—­mine eyes.  The light is—­”

He did not complete the sentence.

“Father,” she asked presently, “why did you change the tickets?”

“Change the tickets, Anna?  I have not changed the tickets.”

“But you told the landlady we were to sail from Southampton.  The tickets, which you showed to me, say Liverpool.”

“A little strategy, mine Anna; just a little strategy.”

“I do not understand.”

“No, liebschen; you do not,” he granted gravely.

A moment later and the cab jounced over a loose paving-block, almost unseating M’riar from her place on the rear springs.  The little scream she gave attracted the attention of the vehicle’s two passengers and they peered from the window at the rear; but it was small and high and they did not catch sight through it of the strange, ragged little figure, with the set, determined face, which was clinging to their chariot with a desperate tenacity.

M’riar’s feelings would have been difficult of real analysis and she did not try to analyze them, any more than a devoted dog who desperately follows his loved master when that master is not cognizant of it and does not wish it, tries to analyze the dog-emotions which compel him to cling to the trail.  Such a dog knows quite enough, at such a time, to keep clear of his master’s view, although his following is an expression of his love and though that love is born, he knows, of like love in his master’s heart for him.  M’riar was yielding to an uncontrolled, an uncontrollable impulse of love, and, though her brain was active with the cunning of the