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He wouldn't eat his bread and milk, though I tied on his best new bib. Oh, dear me, Mrs. Liseke, how noisy your children are! Suppose," said little Hannah, vainly endeavoring to pacify the indignant Mitz, "suppose, Mrs. Liseke, we take the children out for a walk?"
She was elegantly dressed in a bed-sheet, which trailed behind her and was gracefully tied under her chin. Mitz's mother followed, stretching all-fours luxuriously. No, Max wouldn't tell. He plunged two black hands in his breeches' pockets and made up faces and danced a wild war dance, while Mitz and family fled into various corners. "Why don't you slap him?" pouted Liseke.
How they kept their ears open to hear a crowd of men come stumbling up the stone steps with the weight of the piano! "Perhaps it is already here," Liseke said, faintly. "Perhaps it's coming," Hannah suggested, hopefully. "One two three ," the clock struck. "Come, mamma!" the children cried; and so they opened the sitting-room door with trembling hands. Nobody there; nothing there.
Max cried, mightily injured, and turning himself about disclosed his small person arrayed in a new velveteen suit brilliant with brass buttons. "Oh dear dear," sobbed little Hannah with the tears rolling down, "we thought it was a piano! "Did I say it was a piano?" Max howled. "You said it it was was covered with pl plush," Liseke sobbed. "Well, isn't it?"
Liseke whispered excitedly "It is a piano, and perhaps perhaps a stool. Try and find out from Max." "Maxy, dear," Hannah said, imploringly, "is it covered with plush?" "Why, how do you know?" Max cried, unguardedly, as he was finishing his sixth cookey. "I knew it, I knew it," Liseke gasped, wildly. "Does it make a noise if, well, say, if you bang on it?" Hannah cried, with a beating heart.
Hannah and Liseke hadn't slept a wink all night. Mitz and family had come purring into the room in the early morning, as usual, but had been shamefully neglected. All six sat in a row by the bedside, watching indignantly the two heads peeping out from the feathers. "To-day!" Hannah sighed rapturously. How they got into their clothes, they never knew.
Hannah gasped, as the door went to with a crash. "A stool," Liseke added; then, "Let's tell mamma!" That dear, gentle mother, sitting by the dim window trying to mend by the last flicker of daylight! She looked up lovingly as the door flew open. "Mamma," gasped Hannah, "papa's got a surprise for us." "Max said so," chimed in the other. "We've guessed, mother dear." "It's a piano."
"Ingrates!" gasped papa Karl, and strode up and down the room, while Liseke sobbed her grief out on mamma's shoulder, and Max hid his face in her lap, and Hannah was bravely trying to dry her brown eyes. "Karl, they are children," mamma Betty said: softly patting Max's head; then lifting it up gently; "Max, go to the confectioners." Max sprang to his feet as a war-horse at the sound of a trumpet.
"Max, how you frightened me!" cried Hannah; then, "oh, Maxy, what's the matter?" Mitz was forgotten; he gave a leap, shawl and pillow-case, and before Hannah could prevent, had crept out of his bandages and was standing a free cat, with arched back and a defiant tail. By this time Mrs. Liseke had come out of the fire-place with her two youngest in her arms.
"Here are ten groschens;" mamma Betty took them out of her scanty purse with something of a sigh; "buy as much cake and whatever you like. Liseke tell Marie to make a pitcher of chocolate instantly. My little Hannah, you may set the table." "Oh, mamma, may I put on the pretty china cups and saucers?" Hannah pleaded, as Max and Liseke bounded out of the room. "Yes, but be careful, my dear."
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