"And Herr Stubbe will give you the same sum every month till you are able to join your husband." He held out his hand, which she grasped in silence, incapable of finding suitable words to thank him, and he hurried to the door.

The mechanic hastily snatched up the candle from the table, ran after him and lighted him downstairs, murmuring with real emotion: "Thank you a thousand times, Herr Doctor, and may God bless you!" And all the way downstairs Wilhelm was followed by the children's jubilant song of "Bread! bread!" One morning a few days later--it was December the 2d--as Wilhelm was sitting at his writing-table engaged in making notes from a thick English book of travels on the Australian savage's ideas on nature, he heard a sound of quarreling going on in the hall.

He could distinguish Frau Muller's irate tones, and then a man's voice mentioning his name.
He gave no further heed to the dispute, thinking it was doubtless some importune person in whom worthy Frau Muller had detected the professional beggar, and was therefore driving away.

But it did not leave off, and grew louder and louder, Frau Muller's voice rising at last to an exasperated scream--there even seemed to be something like a hand-to-hand fight going on--till Wilhelm thought it behooved him to see what was happening, and, if need be, come to the rescue of his faithful house-dragon.

He opened the door quickly and received Frau Muller in his arms.