perhaps you might like it for a keepsake."

Anthrops snatched eagerly at the little black thing his old friend held
contemptuously balanced on his fingers, but dropped it immediately. Such
a miserable thing to hold those glorious tresses! His dagger was better.
The recollection that it was his dagger that now confined them dispelled
the chill which the irate philosopher had thrown over his glowing
excitement; he submissively proposed a return to potatoes, piling up
famine and wheat over the one little thought that diffused such a
delicious warmth through his breast; as charcoal-burners heap dead ashes
over their fire, to hide it from the rough intrusion of chilling winds.

The nest day Haguna sent back the dagger, with a little note, thanking
the owner in graceful terms.

"Your graceful politeness last evening, Herr Anthrops, saved me much
perplexity, and procured me a delightful waltz. One should indeed be
well protected by fortune, to find so readily such a courteous little
sword," ("She does not know the difference between a sword and a
dagger," thought Anthrops, and he was pleased at her ignorance,) "to
supply one's awkward deficiencies." (Anthrops slightly winced as he
thought of the little black pins.) "The old man on the hilt is really
charming. I actually was obliged to kiss him at parting, he looked so
kindly and pleasantly at me. Besides, he was my true benefactor; and
my grandmother has often told me, that in her day maidens were very
properly more expressive in their gratitude than now." (Anthrops
fervently longed for a retrogression in the calendar.) "And I really
think my old friend must have been alive then, and have been changed
into wood, on purpose to preserve his looks till I could see him. It
would be a right pleasant destiny, when one begins to grow old and ugly,