“I weeped so! All day I have weeped! The all whole day! And my mozzer she console me I shall not weep. And I weep. Ach! It was of most beautifullest.”
Miriam felt as if she were being robbed.... This was Ulrica.... “You remember the Konfirmation, miss?”
“Oh, yes, I remember.”
“Have you weeped?”
“We say cry, not weep, except in poetry—weinen, to cry.”
“Have you cry?”
“No, I didn’t cry. But we mustn’t talk. We must go to sleep. Good night.”
“Gute Nacht. Ach, wie empfindlich bin ich, wie empfindlich....”
Miriam lay thinking of how she and Harriett on their confirmation morning had met the vicar in the Upper Richmond Road, having gone out, contrary to the desire expressed by him at his last preparation class, and how he had stopped and greeted them. She had tried to look vague and sad and to murmur something in spite of the bull’s-eye in her cheek and had suddenly noticed as they stood grouped that Harriett’s little sugar-loaf hat was askew and her brown eye underneath it was glaring fixedly at the vicar above the little knob in her cheek—and how they somehow got away and went, gently reeling and colliding, moaning and gasping down the road out of hearing.