Marie. "Ach, it is beautiful!"
"You must give one to me," said Wärli eagerly.

"Oh, I can't do that," replied Marie, as she opened the drawer and took out a small packet. "It was a present to me from the Polish gentleman himself. He saw me the other day here in the pantry. I was so tired, and I had fallen asleep with my broom, just as you see me here. So he made a photograph of me. He admires me very much. Isn't it nice? and isn't the Polish gentleman clever? and isn't it nice to have so much attention paid to one? Oh, there's that horrid bell again! Good afternoon, Herr Wärli. That is all I have to say to you, thank you."

Wärli's feelings towards the Polish gentleman were not of the friendliest that day.

CHAPTER V.

THE DISAGREEABLE MAN.

ROBERT ALLITSEN told Bernardine that she was not likely to be on friendly terms with the English people in the Kurhaus.

"They will not care about you, and you will not care about the foreigners. So you will thus be thrown on your own resources, just as I was when I came."

"I cannot say that I have any resources," Bernardine answered. "I don't feel well enough to try to do any writing, or else it would be delightful to have the uninterrupted leisure."

So she had probably told him a little about her life and occupation; although it was not likely that she would have given him any serious confidences. Still, people are often surprisingly frank about themselves, even those who pride themselves upon being the most reticent mortals in the world.

"But now, having the leisure," she continued, "I have not the brains!"

"I never knew any writer who had," said the Disagreeable Man grimly.

"Perhaps your experience has been limited," she suggested.

"Why don't you read?" he said. "There is a good library here. It contains all the books we don't want to read."

"I am tired of reading," Bernardine said. "I seem to have been reading all my life. My uncle, with whom I live, keeps, a second-hand book-shop, and ever since I can remember, I have been surrounded by books. They have not done me much good, nor any one else either."

"No,