"What does he want to come at an hour when all sensible folk are in bed?" queried Irma petulantly.
"He couldn't come earlier, mother dear; you know how busy he is always on Sundays . . . benediction, then christenings, then vespers. . . . He said he would be here about eight o'clock."
"Eight o'clock!" exclaimed the woman, "who ever heard of such a ridiculous hour? And candles are so dear—there's only a few centimètres of it in the house."
"I'll only light the candle, mother, when the Pater comes," said Elsa, with imperturbable cheerfulness; "I'll just sit by the open door now and put a stitch or two in father's bunda while the light lasts: and when I can't see any longer I'll just sit quietly in the dark, till the Pater comes. I shall be quite happy," she added, with a quaint little sigh, "I have such a lot to think about."
"So have I," retorted Irma, "and I shall go and do my thinking in bed. I shall have to be up by six o'clock in the morning, I expect, and anyhow I hate sitting up in the dark."
She turned to go into the inner room, but Elsa—moved by a sudden impulse—ran after her and put her arms round her mother's neck.
"Won't you kiss me, mother?" she said wistfully. "You won't do it many more times in my old home."
"A home you have often been ashamed of, my child," the mother said sullenly.
But she kissed the girl—if not with tenderness, at any rate with a curious feeling of pity which she herself could not have defined.
"Good-night, my girl," she said, with more gentleness than was her wont. "Sleep well for the last time in your old bed. I doubt if to-morrow you'll get into it at all, and don't let the Pater stay too long and waste the candle."