Mr. Sandor then said "Good-morning" to the lady, and as he shook hands with me he begged me not to forget what he had told me. After he had gone, the lady bade me follow her and led the way into a room that was furnished completely in white. A table stood in the centre and around it three boys, whom I guessed to be my charges, were sitting. They got up as we entered and looked rather shyly at me.
"Your new governess," the lady said to the children. "Won't you say 'Good-morning' to her?"
Once alone with the children, my shyness left me. I shook hands with them and asked a few simple questions which they answered in broken German. After I had taken off my things, I busied myself at once in amusing the children, tired though I was. I built houses of paper on the table, and did various little things to help me to gain some courage.
After a few days I grew more reassured, and dropped my shyness even towards the mistress. I could see that she was satisfied with me, and since the children also were very fond of me, I no longer felt afraid of being sent away.
I had plenty to do. To take the children to school and to fetch them back again. Also to take them for walks when the weather was fine enough. The darning and sewing I did when they lay asleep.
Apart from a burning home-sickness that had taken hold of me and tortured me especially in the evenings I felt quite happy there, and no doubt believed that I had found at last what I had been longing for all my life. There was one thing, however, that darkened the clear horizon of my days: I had not a single decent dress to wear. It would hardly have troubled me, but I knew that my mistress wanted me to be dressed smartly. She had made little remarks sometimes, which, although never addressed directly to me, gave me to understand that she was ashamed for her friends—whose governesses looked so smart that I had mistaken them for mistresses at the beginning—to see me.
One day my mistress came into the nursery, and, looking around somewhat discontentedly, said:
"The children have been invited to tea, but who shall accompany them?"
I looked at her in surprise.