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"Why did you not get out of my way, you little idiot?" Jakob asked him.

"I wanted to look at the horse," said the child, and added: "Now, I can see it well from here. "

Jakob got the boy’s whereabouts from an onlooker, paid him to take thewheelbarrow back, and himself drove the child home. The sordidness ofMadam Mahler’s house, and her own, one-eyed, blunt unfeelingness impressed him unpleasantly, still he had before now been inside the houses of the poor. But he was, here, struck by a strange incongruity between the back-yard and the child who lived in it. It was as if, unknowingly, Madam Mahler was housing, and knocking about a small, gentle, wild animal, or a sprite. On his way to the villa, he reflected that the child reminded him of his wife,—he had a reserved, as it were, selfless way with him, behind which one guessed great, integrate strength and endurance.

He did not speak of the incident that evening, but he went back to Madam Mahler’s house to inquire about the boy, and, after a while, he recounted the adventure to his wife, and somewhat shyly and half in jest, proposed to her that they should take the pretty, forlorn child as their own.

Half in jest, she entered into his idea; it would be better, she thought, than taking on a child whose parents she knew. After this day she herself at times opened up the matter when she could find nothing else to talk to him about. They consulted the family lawyer, and sent their old doctor to look the child over. Jakob was surprised and grateful at his wife’s compliance to his wish. She listened with gentle interest when he developed his plans, and would even sometimes vent her own ideas on education.

Lately Jakob had found his domestic atmosphere almost too perfect, andhad had an adventure in town, now he tired of it and finished it. Hebought Emilie presents, and left her to make her own conditions as tothe adoption of the child. He might, she said, bring the boy to the house on the first of October, when they had moved into town from the count
ry, but she herself would reserve her final decision in the matter until April, when he should have been with them for six months. If by then she did not find the child fit for their plan, she would hand him over to some honest, kindly family in the employ of the firm. Till April they themselves would likewise be only Uncle and Aunt Vandamm to the boy.

They did not talk to their family of the project, and this circumstance accentuated the new feeling of comradeship between them. How very different, Emilie said to herself, would the case have proved, had she been expecting a child in the orthodox mode of women. There was indeed something neat and proper about settling the affairs of nature according to your own ideas. "And," she whispered in her mind, as her glance ran down her looking-glass, "in keeping your figure. "

As to Madam Mahler, when the time came to approach her, the matter waseasily arranged. She had not got it in her to oppose the wishes of hersocial superiors, she was also, vaguely, rating her own future connection with a house that must surely turn out an abundance of washing. Only the readiness with which Jakob refunded her past outlays on the child left in her heart, a lifelong regret that she had not asked for more.