“Monument?” laughed a German voice apprehensively.
“Fancy a monument on your washstand,” tittered Jimmie.
Fräulein raised her voice slightly, still smiling. Miriam heard her own name and stiffened. “Miss Henderson is an Englishwoman too—and our little Ulrica joins the English party.” Fräulein’s voice had thickened and grown caressing. Perhaps no one was in trouble. Ulrica bowed. Her wide-open startled eyes and the outline of her pale face remained unchanged. Still gentle and tender-voiced Fräulein reached Judy and the Germans. All was well. Soaps and sponges could go in the English bags. Judy’s downcast crimson face began to recover its normal clear flush, and the Germans joined in the general rejoicing. They were to go, Miriam gathered, in the afternoon to the baths. … She had never been to a public baths. … She wished Fräulein could know there were two bathrooms in the house at Barnes, and then wondered whether in German baths one was left to oneself or whether there, too, there would be some woman superintending.
Fräulein jested softly on about her children and their bath. Gertrude and Jimmie recalled incidents of former bathings—the stories went on until breakfast had prolonged itself into a sitting of happy adventurers. The room was very warm, and coffee-scented. Clara at her corner sat with an outstretched arm nearly touching Fräulein Pfaff who was sitting forward glowing and shedding the light of her dark young eyes on each in turn. There were many elbows on the table. Judy’s head was raised and easy. Miriam noticed that the whiteness of her neck was whiter than those strange bright patches where her eyelashes shone. Ulrica’s eyes went from face to face as she listened and Miriam fed upon the outlines of her head.
She wished she could place her hands on either side of its slenderness and feel the delicate skull and gaze undisturbed into the eyes.
Fräulein Pfaff rose at last from the table.
“Na, Kinder,” she smiled, holding her arms out to them all.
She turned to the nearest window.
“Die Fenster auf!” she cried, in quivering tones, “Die Herzen auf!” “Up with windows! Up with hearts!”
Her hands struggled with the hasp of the long-closed outer frame. The girls crowded round as the lattices swung wide. The air poured in.
Miriam stood in a vague crowd seeing nothing. She felt the movement of her own breathing and the cool streaming of the air through her nostrils. She felt comely and strong.
“That’s a thrush,” she heard Bertha Martin say as a chattering flew across a distant garden—and Fräulein’s half-singing reply, “Know you, children, what the thrush says? Know you?” and Minna’s eager voice sounding out into the open, “D’ja, d’ja, ich weiß—Ritzifizier, sagt sie, Ritzifizier, das vierundzwanzigste Jahr!” and voices imitating.
“Spring! Spring! Spring!” breathed Clara, in a low singsong.
Miriam found herself with her hands on the doors leading into the Saal, pushing them gently. Why not? Everything had changed. Everything was good. The great doors gave, the sunlight streamed from behind her into the quiet Saal. She went along the pathway it made and stood in the middle of the room. The voices from the schoolroom came softly, far away. She went to the centre window and pushing aside its heavy curtains saw for the first time that it had no second pane like the others, but led directly into a sort of summerhouse, open in front and leading by a wooden stairway down to the garden plot. Up the railing of the stairway and over the entrance of the summerhouse a creeping plant was putting out tiny leaves. It was in shadow, but the sun caught the sharply peaked gable of the summerhouse and on the left the tops of the high shrubs lining the pathway leading to the wooden door and the great balls finishing the high stone gateway shone yellow with sunlit lichen. She heard the schoolroom windows close and the girls clearing away the breakfast things and escaped upstairs singing.
Before she had finished her duties a summons came. Jimmie brought the message, panting as she reached the top of the stairs.
“Hurry up, Hendy!” she gasped. “You’re one of the distinguished ones, my dear!”
“What do you mean?” Miriam began apprehensively as she turned to go. “Oh, Jimmie—” she tried to laugh ingratiatingly. “Do tell me what you mean?” Jimmie turned and raised a plump hand with a sharply-quirked little finger and a dangle of lace-edged handkerchief.
“You’re a swell, my dear. You’re in with the specials and the classic knot.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going to read—Gerty, or something—no idiots admitted. You’re going it, Hendy. Ta‑ta. Fly! Don’t stick in the mud, old slow coach.”
“I’ll come in a second,” said Miriam, adjusting hairpins.
She was to read Goethe … with Fräulein Pfaff. … Fräulein knew she would be one of the few who would do for a Goethe reading. She reached the little room smiling with happiness.
“Here she is,” was Fräulein’s greeting. The little group—Ulrica, Minna and Solomon Martin were sitting about informally in the sunlit window space, Minna and Solomon had needlework—Ulrica was gazing out into the garden. Miriam sank into the remaining low-seated wicker chair and gave herself up. Fräulein began to read, as she did at prayers, slowly, almost below her breath, but so clearly that Miriam could distinguish each word and her face shone as she bent over her book. It was a poem in blank verse with long undulating lines. Miriam paid no heed to the sense. She heard nothing but the even swing, the slight rising and falling of the clear low tones. She felt once more the opening of the schoolroom window—she saw the little brown summerhouse and the sun shining on the woodwork of its porch. Summer coming. Summer coming in Germany. She drew a long breath. The poem was telling of someone getting away out of a room,
