"What do I think of it? Why, that it isn't much. Where would you all have been, I wonder, if I had only had two thousand a year?"
"Oh, congratulate me!" cried Anna, opening her arms. "Kiss me, and tell me you are glad! Don't you see that I am off your hands at last? That we need never think about husbands again? That you will never have to buy me any more clothes, and never tire your poor little self out any more trotting me round? I don't know which of us is to be congratulated most," she added laughing, looking at Susie with her eyes full of tears. Then she insisted on kissing her again, and murmured foolish things in her ear about being so sorry for all her horrid ways, and so grateful to her, and so determined now to be good for ever and ever.
"My dear Anna," remonstrated Susie, who disliked sentiment and never knew how to respond to exhibitions of feeling. "Of course I congratulate you. It almost seems as if throwing away one's chances in the way you have done was the right thing to do, and is being rewarded. Don't let us waste time. You know we go out to dinner. What has he left Peter?"
"Peter?" said Anna wonderingly.
"Yes, Peter. He was his nephew, I suppose, just as much as you were his niece."
"Well, but Susie, Peter is different. He—he doesn't need money as I do; and of course Uncle Joachim knew that."
"Nonsense. He hasn't got a penny. Let me look at the letters."
"They're in German. You won't be able to read them."
"Give them to me. I learned German at school, and got a prize. You're not the only person in the world who can do things."
She took them out of Anna's hand, and began slowly and painfully to read the one from Uncle Joachim, determined to see whether there really was no mention of Peter. Anna looked on, hot and cold by turns with fright lest by some chance her early studies should not after all have been quite forgotten.