"I am terribly hungry," I said, and slipped into the house while my mother followed slowly with the children. Soon afterwards we sat down to dinner, and my mother was busily preparing the food for the little ones. I helped her a little, handing her a fork, a spoon, or anything that was beyond her reach. After a pause of some length my mother said: "Did you see any of your friends?"
"No," I replied without hesitation, hastily swallowing a large mouthful. I could feel how the blood rushed back into my cheeks, not because I had told a lie (I often told lies), but because I heard the cruel words hum in my head again.
"You are getting quite a big girl now," my mother continued after a pause, "and you could make yourself very useful at home, if it were not that you have to go to school again."
A silly, incomprehensible fear immediately gripped me. Until that moment I had not thought of having to go to school again. "Mother," I said, and lifted up my arms imploringly, "pray do not send me to school again."
"You are getting more and more lazy; you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"So I am," I answered rudely.
My mother got up from the chair suddenly, and I thought that she was going to beat me for such an impudent answer. But she did not beat me; she bent down to one of the little ones and, with her face turned away, told me to clear the things from the table.
During our stay at Hohenburg I had scarcely learnt anything, and when my mother took me to school the next day, the headmaster found that out at once. He declared that I was not by any means able to join the fourth class, but must take up the third class once more. My mother never understood why I looked so exceedingly happy when the headmaster told me that.... I was now at least spared the company of those "two." The mere thought of them became unbearable to me. I decided never to go near them again, and to avoid everything that could bring me into touch with them. But if it happened now and then that we met during the recreation, which we had all to spend out in the garden, I quickly looked in another direction. Hilda and Leopoldine were together almost constantly, and it was only sometimes that I met Hilda by herself. She passed me then with eyes cast down, but inwardly I felt that she loved me still and only did not speak because she was forbidden to do so. At such moments I loved her more than I had ever done before; I even thought of walking up to her and speaking to her again. But whenever I wanted to put that thought into action, my feet refused to move; I stood like one rooted to the ground, and all that I was able to do was to look after her and watch how she went away slowly, sometimes very slowly.
One day I heard from a schoolfellow that Hilda had been sent to Krems in order to join a seminary for school-teachers. After that I felt as lonely and wretched as a child has ever felt. It is true that she had never spoken to me again, but her figure was the most vivid picture in my mind, and to watch her secretly from behind a quiet corner had filled my heart with a happiness strangely sweet and sad.... "Why," I thought angrily—"why was Hilda sent away? why not Leopoldine?" Whenever we met, her face wore a malicious smile, the very smile it had worn when she had said those terrible words to me. I began to hate her, and prayed every night to God that He might cause her mother (she had no father) to be locked up too. But her mother never got locked up. One day when I accidentally passed their house I saw a lot of labourers busying themselves over it, and when I, driven by curiosity, stole by in the dusk another evening, the house looked more beautiful than ever. Henceforth Leopoldine was dressed in very pretty clothes, and the smile on her face grew more and more malicious.