Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/39

Rh At the bottom of the sheet Karl had written:—

Grief has no tears like joy. A stranger would have supposed for the next few days that the whole household was in sorrow. Everybody's face was red with weeping. Nobody could speak in a steady voice. Wilhelm sat silent, by the hour, looking into the fire, and wiping his eyes.

"Oh, Miss Margaret," he said; "Oh teacher, taught of some angel, why did I not believe you? Why is it that you, who have not known our Karl, should be the one to be told, and not I?"

Margaret was on the point of telling him that the maiden of Ischl had told her because she found her sleeping in Karl's room. But a vague shame sealed her lips. She need not have hesitated. It would not have seemed a strange or an incredible thing to Wilhelm Reutner.

The next letters were not so cheering. The excitement of hearing, even by letter, from his friends, had caused a slight relapse of Karl's fever, and the physician now thought that it might be six weeks before he could safely travel. It was a hard thing for Wilhelm to sit quietly at home and wait for so many days. Only Margaret's influence withheld him from going to Philadelphia at once.

"I need not to see him," he said; "I could go each day to the door and ask if he is better. No hurt