21
Miriam almost ran home from seeing Minna into the three o’clock train ... dear beautiful, beautiful Hanover ... the sunlight blazed from the rain-sprinkled streets. Everything shone. Bright confident shops, happy German cafés moved quickly by as she fled along. Sympathetic eyes answered hers. She almost laughed once or twice when she met an eye and thought how funny she must look “tearing along” with her long, thick, black jacket bumping against her.... She would leave it off to-morrow and go out in a blouse and her long black lace scarf.... She imagined Harriett at her side—Harriett’s long scarf and longed to do the “crab walk” for a moment or the halfpenny dip, hippety-hop. She did them in her mind.
She heard the sound of her boot soles tapping the shining pavement as she hurried along ... she would write a short note to her mother “a girl about my own age with very wealthy parents who wants a companion” and enclose a note for Eve or Harriett ... Eve, “Imagine me in Pomerania, my dear” ... and tell her about the coffee parties and the skating and the sleighing and Minna’s German Christmasses....
She saw Minna’s departing face leaning from the carriage window, its new gay boldness: “I shall no more when we are at home call you Miss Henderson.”
When she got back to Waldstrasse she found Anna’s successor newly arrived cleaning the neglected front doorstep. Her lean yellow face looked a vacant response to Miriam’s enquiry for Fräulein Pfaff.
“Ist Fräulein zu Hause,” she repeated. The girl shook her head vaguely.
How quiet the house seemed. The girls, after a morning spent in turning out the kitchen for the reception of the new magd were out for a long ramble, including Schocolade mit Schlagsahne until tea-time.
The empty house spread round her and towered above her as she took off her things in the basement and the schoolroom yawned bright and empty as she reached the upper hall. She hesitated by the door. There was no sound anywhere.... She would play ... on the saal piano.
“I’m not a Lehrerin—I’m not—I’m—not,” she hummed as she collected her music ... she would bring her songs too.... “I’m going to Pom—pom—pom—Pom-erain—eeya.”