So saying, she squeezed both his hands and jumped into a tramcar.
Oh, what a joy this was! What a joy! Now she had found what she had been looking for so long. Someone for whom she could care, someone to pet and spoil. Someone to whom she would be more than a toy and a plaything; who would regard her as his sunshine and bread of life, and his gentle guide to hope and happiness.
Someone who would be hers alone--hers alone!
He hid risen from the grave of her youth, even as she had imagined in her dreams. And now life was going to be different; full of riches, full of secrets. Little, funny, but perfectly innocent secrets!
That night she slept little. Her new-found happiness kept her awake like children's Christmas anticipations. Her present servant, a buxom country girl, who had soon got accustomed to town ways, stared in astonishment the next morning when Lilly, whom she had hitherto regarded as lazy, rose early and prepared to go out marketing.
"I am expecting a friend," explained Lilly, smiling.
She wanted to buy everything herself--the meat, the radishes; above all, the sausages that once had been the glory of his mother's potato soup.
She also superintended the cooking. She laid the table, moved the palm from the aquarium so that there should be something green on the table, for in her excitement she had forgotten to buy flowers. This was her very first guest at dinner for more than two years; and such a dear guest, perhaps the dearest she could possibly have entertained.
At half-past twelve the servant came in, turning up her nose in contempt, to say that a young man wanted to speak to her mistress.
"That is my guest!" cried Lilly.