The Old Flute-Player | Page 5

looked at the poor slavey with the kind eyes of a princess gazing at
a weeping subject, whose suffering has come through loyalty, and
kindly smiled.
"It is very nice of you, M'riarr. I am fond of you, M'riarr."
"I knows yer is; I knows yer is," said M'riar. "Tyke me with yer, won't
yer, Miss?"
"Oh, I couldn't take you with me," Anna answered, as she laid a kind, if
queenly hand upon the poor thing's cheek. "But you must let me know
just where you are at all times, and, perhaps, some day, I will send you
something to remind you of me."

"Hi won't need nothink ter remind me, Miss," said M'riar. "Hi'll
remember yer, hall right."
The next morning came a four-wheeled cab up to the dingy door, to the
vast amazement of the other lodgers, and, indeed, the entire
neighborhood. Into this Herr Kreutzer handed his delightful daughter
with as much consideration as a minister could show a queen, and then,
with courtly bows, climbed in himself, having, with much ceremony,
bade the landlady adieu. Anna cast a keen glance all about, expecting a
last glimpse of M'riar, but had none and was grieved. So soon do the
affections of the lower classes fade!
After the cab started, the Herr Kreutzer carefully pulled down the
blinds a little way, on both side windows, so that the inside of the cab
was dark enough to make it impossible for wayfarers to note who was
within.
"Father," said Anna, curiously, "why do you pull down the blinds?"
"Er--er--mine eyes. The light is--"
He did not complete the sentence.
"Father," she asked presently, "why did you change the tickets?"
"Change the tickets, Anna? I have not changed the tickets."
"But you told the landlady we were to sail from Southampton. The
tickets, which you showed to me, say Liverpool."
"A little strategy, mine Anna; just a little strategy."
"I do not understand."
"No, liebschen; you do not," he granted gravely.
A moment later and the cab jounced over a loose paving-block, almost
unseating M'riar from her place on the rear springs. The little scream
she gave attracted the attention of the vehicle's two passengers and they

peered from the window at the rear; but it was small and high and they
did not catch sight through it of the strange, ragged little figure, with
the set, determined face, which was clinging to their chariot with a
desperate tenacity.
M'riar's feelings would have been difficult of real analysis and she did
not try to analyze them, any more than a devoted dog who desperately
follows his loved master when that master is not cognizant of it and
does not wish it, tries to analyze the dog-emotions which compel him
to cling to the trail. Such a dog knows quite enough, at such a time, to
keep clear of his master's view, although his following is an expression
of his love and though that love is born, he knows, of like love in his
master's heart for him. M'riar was yielding to an uncontrolled, an
uncontrollable impulse of love, and, though her brain was active with
the cunning of the slums, had not the least idea of combatting it, or
letting anything less strong than actual death would be in its deterrent
force, prevent her from obeying the swift impulse to the very end. She
had not taken any of her mistress' money, when she fled. Her only sin,
she told herself, was leaving without notice. She had only made a little
bundle of her own worn, scanty, extra clothes, which, now, was tied
about her waist and hung beneath the skirt she wore. There were not
many of those clothes, so the dangling bundle did not discommode her
when she dodged behind the cab, ran beside it (on the far side from the
lodging-house) till it turned a corner, and then sought her perch upon
its springs behind. In her mouth were seven golden sovereigns, the
hoard of her whole lifetime, barring some small silver and an Irish
one-pound note stowed in her left stocking. Her right stocking had been
darned till it was nowise to be trusted with one-eighth of her whole
wealth. She had no dimmest thought of whither she was bound; she
only knew that she would go, if Fate permitted, wherever Anna went,
to serve her.
Arrived at the confusion of the railway station known as Waterloo,
Herr Kreutzer helped his Anna from the cab, paid the cabman from his
slender store of silver, hired a porter with another shilling to take all
their luggage to the train and went to get their third-class railway
tickets, keeping, meanwhile, a keen eye for anyone who looked to be a

German of position, and noting with delight that in the