“The little heiress,” she said devoutly, with her wide smile as she returned from the door.
“Oh ...” said Miriam politely.
“Sie, nun, Miss Henderson,” concluded Fräulein, handing her the book and indicating the passage Ulrica had just read. “Nun Sie,” she repeated brightly, and Minna drew her chair a little nearer making a small group.
4
“Schiller” she saw at the top of the page and the title of the poem “Der Spaziergang.” Miriam laid the book on the end of her knee, and leaning over it, read nervously. Her tones reassured her. She noticed that she read very slowly, breaking up the rhythm into sentences—and authoritatively as if she were recounting an experience of her own. She knew at first that she was reading like a cultured person and that Fräulein would recognise this at once, she knew that the perfect assurance of her pronunciation would make it seem that she understood every word, but soon these feelings gave way to the sense half grasped of the serpentine path winding and mounting through a wood, of a glimpse of a distant valley, of flocks and villages, and of her unity with Fräulein and Minna seeing and feeling all these things together. She finished the passage—Fräulein quietly commended her reading and Minna said something about her earnestness.
“Miss Henderson is always a little earnest,” said Fräulein affectionately.
5
“Are you dressed, Hendy?”
Miriam, who had sat up in her bath when the drumming came at the door, answered sleepily, “No, I shan’t be a minute.”
“Don’t you want to see the diving?”