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There was that about Andreas which drew all children to him, even as his birds were drawn to him; and a part of the spell certainly was the love for children that always was in his heart. The small Minna was disposed not a little to caprice–for she was a motherless child, and Aunt Hedwig humored her waywardness a trifle more than was good for her–and she manifested, usually, a certain haughtiness towards those who sought to make friends with her. Yet of her own accord one day, when Andreas had ceased to be a stranger to her, she went up to him and offered him a kiss. Aunt Hedwig volubly explained to Andreas the honor that had been done him, and from that moment was disposed herself to be most friendly with him–as was also the baker, and as was also Herr Sohnstein, when the story of this extraordinary performance duly was related to them. And thus there began a real friendship between Andreas and these kindly souls that ever grew riper as the years went on. Sometimes of an evening, when his birds were all asleep and he was left lonely, Andreas would step around to the bakery; and would sit for an hour or so in the little room back of the shop, listening pleasantly to the talk of Gottlieb and Herr Sohnstein, as they smoked their long pipes, and even laughing in a quiet way at the merry sallies thrown into the conversation by Aunt Hedwig as she sat knitting beside the fire. Andreas himself rarely spoke–it was not his way; but there was such a sympathetic quality in his silence that his lack of words passed almost unobserved. Much more attention was attracted by the fact that he did not smoke–a fact that was looked upon as most extraordinary. But this also went unheeded after a while, as it well might in a small room wherein Gottlieb and Herr Sohnstein were smoking with such vigor that the air was a deep, heavy blue. It was because his birds did not like smoke that he had given up his pipe, he explained, simply; and only to Minna did it occur to say, after she had turned the matter over in her small mind for a while, that the Herr Stoffel must be a very kind-hearted man to go without smoking because the smell of tobacco-smoke wasn’t nice for his birds.

When Andreas took the little Roschen to his home, that sad day after the funeral, the good Hedwig was among the first of the womenkind to go to him with tenders of instruction and advice; for while Hedwig was only, as it were, a matron by brevet, she was deeply impressed by the extent of her own knowledge in the matter of how motherless children should be raised; and it is but just to add that this self-confidence was fully warranted by the good results that had attended upon her care of her brother’s child. Something of the story of Andreas and Christine, and something of what he had done for her and for her husband, was known in the bakery; and enough more was guessed to make these friends of his feel towards him, because of it all, a still stronger and more earnest friendship. Herr Sohnstein, who, being a lawyer with an extensive practice in the criminal courts, was not by any means in the habit of praising his fellow-men indiscriminately, even went so far as to say that Andreas was “better than any of the saints already.” And when Aunt Hedwig, somewhat shocked at this comparison to the disfavor at a single thrust of the whole body of saints put together, reproved Herr Sohnstein for his irreverence, he stoutly declared that while his knowledge of saints was comparatively limited–since they did not come within the jurisdiction of the courts–he certainly never had read of one who had shown a finer quality of charity, both in forgiveness and in self-sacrifice, than that which Andreas had displayed.