Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/30

20 still smaller room, also with one window to the east.

"Oh!" exclaimed Margaret. "Can you spare them both? That will be perfect. My good friends, I cannot thank you enough."

Wilhelm looked at Margaret with a steadfast, half-dreamy gaze. The German nature is a strangely magnetic one, under all its phlegmatic and prosaic exterior.

"I have a belief that it is I and my house who are laid under debt by you, teacher," he said, with singular earnestness.

So it was settled that Margaret should come to live with the Reutners, and should have Karl's room till he returned from the war.

She wished to come at once, but Wilhelm insisted on a week's interval. Annette looked puzzled; she knew of no reason for the delay; but Wilhelm was firm, and Margaret did not press the matter.

Seven days later, when Margaret went home again, with Annettechen and Mariska,—this time really going home,—she hardly knew the little rooms. Wilhelm had painted the walls of a soft gray; he had taken away the closet door, made the door-way into an arch, and hung it with curtains of plain gray cloth, of the same shade as the walls. A narrow strip of plain crimson paper bordered the rooms; a set of plain book shelves on the wall were edged with the same crimson paper. A small table, with a crimson cloth, and a comfortable