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Updated: June 7, 2025
"You need not fear. I shall never want any other music master but you, never!" Pinac and Fico noticed it and so did Miss Husted. Poons probably would have noticed it, too, if he had not been in love. But Jenny was the only one who really felt the change in Professor Von Barwig. Try as he would, the old man could not conceal from them the fact that "something had happened."
Von Barwig and Poons looked at each other helplessly. Apart from the tragedy of two men trying to comfort a little child that had lost its parent, there remained in Von Barwig's mind a sense of the utter inability of the masculine individuality to fill the place of mother in the child's heart.
But, feeling that he was selfish, he kissed them both affectionately, and promised he would speak to Miss Husted for them at the first opportunity. He did not have to wait long, for a few moments later Miss Husted came into the room with a letter for the "professor," and saw enough to convince her that Poons and her niece were more than friends.
One day he called for his beloved Poons, but they did not dare to tell him that his faithful friend was dead; the shock of that night had brought on a stroke from which Poons never recovered. When they did tell him long afterward, he only smiled, shook his head sadly, and said, "Why not? All is gone! Why should my old friend remain to me?"
You must dress, you have barely five minutes: five to dress, ten to get to the Gewandhaus." "Ha! they can wait!" said Von Barwig grimly. "Prince Mecklenburg Strelitz, the Kaiser, all Germany can wait, while I mend the strings of my heart!" The nurse-maid came in and suggested that it was time to put little Fräulein to bed. Poons looked at her closely; her eyelids were red, for she had been crying.
How the man got so much on his fork and swallowed it down by the yard nobody knew, it was simply a sublime feat! Every word was a scream of laughter. "Just listen to this," said Miss Husted, laughing at the very memory of the joke. "Young Poons asked what was garlic, and the professor said: 'Garlic is a vegetable limburger! The idea of such a thing!" Even Mrs. Mangenborn consented to smile.
Pinac was playing his violin, Poons the 'cello and Fico was at the piano, with Jenny apparently as the audience. "Isn't Professor Barwig here?" inquired Miss Husted, surprised at his room being occupied during his absence. "No, Miss Owstong," said Pinac, always the spokesman of the trio. He spoke English slightly better than Fico, who could barely make himself understood.
He loved them, yes; they were good children, good; dear, children, but his heart yearned for his own flesh and blood. It did not satisfy him that Jenny put her arms around his neck and kissed him gratefully, or that Poons embraced him and cried over him. Their happiness only emphasised his misery. He wanted his own flesh and blood; he wanted his wife and his little Hélène.
He did not understand how Herr Von Barwig could be so poor, but he accepted the facts as they were and ceased to ask himself any further questions. In due course they arrived at Miss Husted's and young Poons, bag and baggage and 'cello, was shortly afterward ensconced in a hall bedroom on the top floor of that lady's establishment.
"Some one is investing his money for him and hasn't come back yet," Von Barwig confided to his friends; and they laughed too. Poons could not understand why the men laughed at his troubles.
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