She heard the sound of her boot soles tapping the shining pavement as she hurried along ... she would write a short note to her mother “a girl about my own age with very wealthy parents who wants a companion” and enclose a note for Eve or Harriett ... Eve, “Imagine me in Pomerania, my dear” ... and tell her about the coffee parties and the skating and the sleighing and Minna’s German Christmasses....
She saw Minna’s departing face leaning from the carriage window, its new gay boldness: “I shall no more when we are at home call you Miss Henderson.”
When she got back to Waldstrasse she found Anna’s successor newly arrived cleaning the neglected front doorstep. Her lean yellow face looked a vacant response to Miriam’s enquiry for Fräulein Pfaff.
“Ist Fräulein zu Hause,” she repeated. The girl shook her head vaguely.
How quiet the house seemed. The girls, after a morning spent in turning out the kitchen for the reception of the new magd were out for a long ramble, including Schocolade mit Schlagsahne until tea-time.
The empty house spread round her and towered above her as she took off her things in the basement and the schoolroom yawned bright and empty as she reached the upper hall. She hesitated by the door. There was no sound anywhere.... She would play ... on the saal piano.
“I’m not a Lehrerin—I’m not—I’m—not,” she hummed as she collected her music ... she would bring her songs too.... “I’m going to Pom—pom—pom—Pom-erain—eeya.”
22
“Pom—erain—eeya,” she hummed, swinging herself round the great door into the saal. Pastor Lahmann was standing near one of the windows. The rush of her entry carried her to the middle of the room and he met her there smiling quietly. She stared easily and comfortably up into his great mild eyes, went into them as they remained quietly and gently there, receiving her. Presently he said in a soft low tone, “You are vairy happy, mademoiselle.”
Miriam moved her eyes from his face and gazed out of the window into the little sunlit summer-house. The sense of the outline of his shoulders and his comforting black mannishness so near to her brought her almost to tears. Fiercely she fixed the sunlit summer-house, “Oh, I’m not,” she said.