Part 50 (1/2)

”They have become a little crumpled in packing. Please have them bring me an iron; I must iron them before I hang them up.”

”Do you wish to iron them yourself?”

”Naturally. There are not many of them: those I must make respectable--the servant can heat the iron. Oh, they must last a long time.”

”Why haven't you brought more with you?”

Melanie's face for a moment flushed a full rose--then she answered this indiscreet inquiry calmly:

”Simply, my dear Czipra, because the rest were seized by our creditors, who claimed them as a debt.”

”Couldn't you have antic.i.p.ated them?”

Melanie clasped her hands on her breast, and said with the astonishment of moral aversion:

”How? By doing so I should have swindled them.”

Czipra recollected herself.

”True; you are right.”

Czipra helped Melanie to put her things in the cupboards. With a woman's critical eye, she examined everything. She found the linen not fine enough, though the work on it pleased her well. That was Melanie's own handiwork. As regards books, there was only one in the trunk, a prayer-book. Czipra opened it and looked into it. There were steel plates in it. The portrait of a beautiful woman, seven stars round her head, raising her tear-stained eyes to Heaven: and the picture of a kneeling youth, round the fair bowed head of whom the light of Heaven was pouring. Long did she gaze at the pictures. Who could those figures be?

There were no jewels at all among the new-comer's treasures.

Czipra remarked that Melanie's ear-rings were missing.

”You have left your earrings behind too?” she asked, hiding any want of tenderness in the question by delivering it in a whisper.

”Our solicitor told me,” said Melanie, with downcast eyes, ”that those earrings also were paid for by creditors' money:--and he was right. I gave them to him.”

”But the holes in your ears will grow together; I shall give you some of mine.”

Therewith she ran to her room, and in a few moments returned with a pair of earrings.

Melanie did not attempt to hide her delight at the gift.

”Why, my own had just such sapphires, only the stones were not so large.”

And she kissed Czipra, and allowed her to place the earrings in her ears.

With the earrings came a brooch. Czipra pinned it in Melanie's collar, and her eyes rested on the pretty collar itself: she tried it, looked at it closely and could not discover ”how it was made.”

”Don't you know that work? it is crochet, quite a new kind of fancy-work, but very easy. Come, I will show you right away.”

Thereupon she took out two crochet needles and a reel of cotton from her work-case, and began to explain the work to Czipra: then she gave it to her to try. Her first attempt was very successful. Czipra had learned something from the new-comer, and remarked that she would learn much more from her.

Czipra spent an hour with Melanie and an hour later came to the conclusion that she was only now beginning--to be a girl.

At supper they appeared with their arms round each other's necks.