So I have got his things in order, and knit heels into two pairs of the socks, for they were boggled out of shape with his queer darns.  Nothing was said, and I hoped he wouldn’t find it out, but one day last week he caught me at it.  Hearing the lessons he gives to others has interested and amused me so much that I took a fancy to learn, for Tina runs in and out, leaving the door open, and I can hear.  I had been sitting near this door, finishing off the last sock, and trying to understand what he said to a new scholar, who is as stupid as I am.  The girl had gone, and I thought he had also, it was so still, and I was busily gabbling over a verb, and rocking to and fro in a most absurd way, when a little crow made me look up, and there was Mr. Bhaer looking and laughing quietly, while he made signs to Tina not to betray him.

“So!” he said, as I stopped and stared like a goose, “you peep at me, I peep at you, and this is not bad, but see, I am not pleasanting when I say, haf you a wish for German?”

“Yes, but you are too busy.  I am too stupid to learn,” I blundered out, as red as a peony.

“Prut!  We will make the time, and we fail not to find the sense.  At efening I shall gif a little lesson with much gladness, for look you, Mees Marsch, I haf this debt to pay.”  And he pointed to my work ‘Yes,’ they say to one another, these so kind ladies, ’he is a stupid old fellow, he will see not what we do, he will never observe that his sock heels go not in holes any more, he will think his buttons grow out new when they fall, and believe that strings make theirselves.’  “Ah!  But I haf an eye, and I see much.  I haf a heart, and I feel thanks for this.  Come, a little lesson then and now, or—­no more good fairy works for me and mine.”

Of course I couldn’t say anything after that, and as it really is a splendid opportunity, I made the bargain, and we began.  I took four lessons, and then I stuck fast in a grammatical bog.  The Professor was very patient with me, but it must have been torment to him, and now and then he’d look at me with such an expression of mild despair that it was a toss-up with me whether to laugh or cry.  I tried both ways, and when it came to a sniff or utter mortification and woe, he just threw the grammar on to the floor and marched out of the room.  I felt myself disgraced and deserted forever, but didn’t blame him a particle, and was scrambling my papers together, meaning to rush upstairs and shake myself hard, when in he came, as brisk and beaming as if I’d covered myself in glory.

“Now we shall try a new way.  You and I will read these pleasant little marchen together, and dig no more in that dry book, that goes in the corner for making us trouble.”