"Swaddle?" said Ingeborg.
"Swaddle," confirmed Ilse.
And as Ingeborg only stared, the young lady gradually plumbing her ignorance produced a small mattress in a white and frilly linen bag, and diving down beneath the counter, brought up a dusty doll which she deftly rolled up to the armpits in the squares, inserted it into the bag with its head out, and tied it firmly with tapes. "So," she said, giving this neat object a resounding slap: and picking it up she pretended to rock it fondly in her arms. "Behold the First Born," she said.
After that Ingeborg put herself entirely into these experienced hands. She bought all she was told to. She even bought the doll to practise on—"It will not do everything of course," explained the young lady. The one thing she would not buy was a sewing machine to make her own swaddle with, as Ilse economically counselled. The young lady was against this purchase, which could only be made in another shop; she said true ladies always preferred Berding and Kühn to do such work for them. Ilse said true mothers always did it for themselves, and it was one of the chief joys of this blessed time, Ilse said, seeing the house grow fuller and fuller of swaddle.
At this the young lady pursed her lips and shrugged her shoulders and assumed an air of waiting indifference.
Ilse, resenting her attitude, inquired of her heatedly what, then, she knew of Mutterglück.
The young lady, for some reason, was offended at this, though nothing was more certain than that knowledge of Mutterglück would have meant instant dismissal from Berding and Kühn's. It became a wrangle across the counter, and was only ended by Ingeborg's altogether siding with the young lady and the interests of Berding and Kühn, and ordering, as the Baroness had directed, ten dozen each of the ready-made squares. "I'd die if I had to hem ten dozen of anything," she explained apologetically to Ilse.
And it was very bitter to Ilse, who meant well, to see the young lady look at her with a meditative comprehensiveness down her nose; it left no honourable course open to her but to sulk, and in her heart she would rather not have sulked on this exciting and unusual excursion. She was forced to, however, by her own public opinion, and she did it vigorously, thoroughly, blackly, all the rest of the day, all the way home; and neither cakes nor chocolate nor ices earnestly and successively applied to her by Ingeborg at the pastrycook's were allowed to lighten the gloom.
"But I suppose," Ingeborg said to herself as she crept into her bed that night in the spiritless mood called philosophical, for Ilse was her stay and refuge, and to have her not speaking to her, to feel she had hurt her, was a grievous thing, a thing when one is weary very like the last straw—"I suppose it's all really only a part of B. Oh, oh," she added with a sudden flare of rebellion that died out immediately in shame of it, "I don't think I like B—I don't think I like B...."