Uncle

Where might the burgomaster of Meerane be bound, all resplendent in his uniform of office, at this grey hour of a nipping winter's day? Perhaps off to dine with a dignitary, maybe some great dignitary up at Altenburg or over in Glauchau. No, he seemed too excited even for that. How his whiskers trembled! How his eyes danced! The burghers of Meerane followed him down the street.

In front of the butcher shop, Marie Drazdorf, maid-of-all-work, paid not the slightest heed to the growing procession. She must get the shutters hung up and the doorstep scrubbed before suppertime. Then there would be coals to carry, and the dishes, the pots, the. . . Ach! Will busybodies never let a woman finish her work? What would this fat burgomaster be looking at her for? "Good evening, Mr. Burgomaster." ... Eh ? He was bowing? The burgomaster bowing at Marie Drazdorf, the butcher's drudge girl? At Marie Drazdorf, with a five-year-old son and a man too poor to marry her?

The burgomaster could not speak at first but when he did, he spoke with a rush. He congratulated Fraulein Drazdorf. He blessed her and it was a great honor and he bowed again and kissed her hand. She was, he told her, the principal heir to a $5,000,000 estate left by her "American uncle," the late Mr. Scheffelbauer of Milwaukee. The burgomaster laid before her cable-despatches impressively authenticated. . . .

Marie Drazdorf dumped piles of mail into the stove. Proposals of marriage, she knew they were, from gentlemen, knaves and louts who yesterday would not have noticed a sweeper of floors, a scrubber of steps. She burned everything without opening an envelope. Half of them were begging letters, too; boasts from dressmakers, stores offering credit, lawyers offering advice. . . . Marie Drazdorf spent some of her savings for a new suit for her boy, but she told her man, Josef Raff, to keep on working like the steady man he was. They would wait for the fortune to come in July. Then she would give some money to Butcher Bachmann, who had been kind when she had her baby. Then they would see what they would do. ... Yes, Marie Drazdorf remembered a legend of an ancestor who went to the U. S. long ago. . . .

In Manhattan, as a matter of routine, the New York Times queried its Milwaukee correspondent about the will of the late Mr. Scheffelbauer. A reply came in time to be published with the despatches from Meerane. Everything seemed to be in order. A millionaire had died there recently, leaving provision for a working girl with a name something like Marie Drazdorf's, only this millionaire's name was not Scheffelbauer, but "Hans P. Leffelschmalz, the wienerschnitzer king." And Mr. Leffelschmalz had not exactly lived in Milwaukee; he had figured there in a fiction serial, written for a Milwaukee daily by one of its reporters. There was no record of a Mr. Scheffelbauer in Milwaukee, quick or dead. "Marie Drazdorf," advised the Milwaukee correspondent, "will do well not to leave her present job. . . ."