"It's good, eat it," he said. She put it in her mouth, one piece and then, very quickly, the other. Hunger, she knew about it, all about it. This was something different and she was getting warm.
The silence that fell somewhat heavily upon the room, was broken by Hansi recounting to his father, boastfully, stoutly, what they had had for dinner and smacking his lips and showing him the colored picture from the package of "feinste Keks"; then how Carli hadn't wanted his rice and how they had had that too.
"Carli isn't well today," said Kaethe, "he seems so languid, but he's asleep now. He dropped off as soon as he had had his milk."
"I'm coming every Thursday," put in Tante Ilde comfortably at this point. She was feeling quite happy, almost joyous. "Fanny," she added in an aside, "sent word by Maria that I was always to get enough for everybody!"
Eberhardt flushed slightly but made no answer. Lilli and Resl were getting on their coats. As Lilli again put on her mother's old black cloak over her blue dress it was as if a snuffer had been put over a light,—a white, blue and gold light. Her father was content that it was so. About Resl they didn't worry. There was something strong, inevitable about her, even in those young years. She was clearly one who would get through. She was very like her mother, but behind that soft, dark resemblance was something steely that Kaethe had never had.
Things were always happening to Resl,—pleasant things. Those bright-dark eyes of hers, that round, smiling face that somehow kept its roundness through all those terrible winters, had something compelling about it. An American woman on one of the relief committees had seen Resl on a windy day looking into a delicatessen shop, and had taken a fancy to her. She had given her a meal a day for two months, and shoes and other things, often something to take home, then she had passed out of Resl's orbit into new circles of want. Another time coming home from school, Resl had stopped to swell the crowd around a smashed taxicab, and some one had cried, "Do look at that bright-eyed little girl!" and had given her a ten shilling note,—just like that! She hadn't understood what they said, but their smiles that she promptly returned and the money that she dashed home with were perfectly intelligible. Once she had found a gold piece in the street, when she and Lilli were going along together; of course she had been the one to find it. Lilli when she saw Resl pick it up, had hoped that it had been dropped by some very rich person, instead of by some one who hadn't anything else. To Resl, however, such fears were unknown, she would always take unquestioningly whatever goods the gods provided.
Tante Ilde was telling them about the woman who had grabbed the milk out of her very hand, and Hansi was saying with his chest out and his eyes ablaze,
"I'd have beaten her well, Tante Ilde," when they heard a scream from the next room,—a terrible scream, despair and supplication were in it.
Eberhardt and Tante Ilde rushed in followed by the children, Marichi stayed behind, cowering again. That scream had something frighteningly familiar about it.
Kaethe was holding Carli up to the window, where the light shone full on his baby face ... quite gently, quite easily, Carli had slipped from them leaving only his little waxen image.