"Look here, Röschen, this one. And here, this one." She pointed to different places in the moss with her foot and told the child to gather.
"But aren't those poisonous, mammie? Marianna says----"
"Fiddle-de-dee. What does Marianna know about it? She's more stupid than I took her to be; she a country girl and doesn't even know mushrooms? Pick them, pick them. They're good. They're your father's favourite dish when they're fried in butter and then stewed in cream."
So Rosa knelt down quickly and was soon busy gathering the red mushrooms that had an orange tinge and little white knobs on their caps as though they had been embroidered; such bright looking mushrooms they were, the prettiest of them all. And then she gathered some of the brown ones as well, which she had avoided so carefully the first time, and her basket was soon full.
"Now we've got enough," said Mrs. Tiralla. "Now you can't make a mistake, and you'll know where to find them. Next time you can go alone."
"Oh, yes, of course I know now. But it's nice to go to the wood with you," said the child ingratiatingly, hanging on her mother's arm.
She was almost as tall as her mother now, their shoulders were on the same level; they could have been taken for sisters. The black-haired woman with her velvety, sparkling eyes was certainly more beautiful, but there was such a gentle, happy expression on the girl's face that made one forgetful of her freckles and her pale blue eyes.
"How father will feast," said Rosa, and pressed her mother's arm. "Shall you prepare them for him this evening?"
"I shall prepare them for him this evening," repeated the woman absent-mindedly. Her thoughts were already far ahead. Would he suffer when he had eaten them, as Marianna had said? She trembled. But there must be no compassion. Had she not suffered, suffered agonies from the very first hour he had come to her mother's sewing-room and had stretched out his coarse fingers to take her? She did not like him, no, she had never liked him. And she disliked him more than ever since he had begun to drink, since he had returned one evening from the inn dead drunk; and now he often came home so intoxicated that Marianna and Jendrek had to take him under the arms and drag him into the house. If he ate some of the mushrooms, and the Holy Virgin would stand by him, he would close his eyes immediately afterwards. That would be the best thing for him. Had he not said the last time he was drunk and was crying so bitterly, "I don't suit this place. When my Sophia is a widow, will she love me more than she does now?" Yes, she would. He was quite right, and he had felt it dully in his intoxication. A monument should be erected to his memory, as beautiful a cross as could be ordered in Gradewitz, or even in Gnesen. If only he would depart, it only he would depart and leave her in peace.
The woman's feelings towards her husband became almost tender. She would make the mushrooms very nice, and neither spare the butter nor the cream.