“Oh, I am so glad that you have settled it all between you! I am so pleased that you are going to stay, Cornelli,” she said, full of joy. “I was just going to propose it to you, and I am so glad that Dino has persuaded you. Your father has already given me his permission and all I have to do is to let him know right away. Now you can stay quietly together, for there is no hurry about supper.”
The mother immediately wrote to Mr. Hellmut, and soon after that, fat little Trina was running over to the hotel.
Cornelli had again settled down beside Dino with a mixed feeling of wonderful delight and fear. He noticed her timidity.
“Oh, yes, Dino, I love to stay with you and Mux,” she assured him. “Your mother is so good to me, too, but I am afraid of your two sisters. I have to think of poor little block-headed Trina all the time, when she does everything wrong and does not know how to do otherwise; you all despise her for it and she can’t help it. I know what it is like to be so block-headed.”
Dino had to laugh a little.
“Why do you suddenly think of our Trina?” he asked. “Do not worry about her, for mother is very good to her. Just be happy, Cornelli, and do not imagine all kinds of things about block-headed Trina.”
Cornelli did not say another word, but Dino noticed that she kept on thinking just the same. After a while the mother came to announce that it was time for Dino’s rest. The prospect of seeing each other again on the following day was a great consolation to them both.
Then Cornelli and the mother went back to the room where the sisters were sitting at their school work. Mux was bending over his picture book, hatching out new ideas, no doubt. Just then the half grown Trina entered with a basket on her arm. While she was passing Nika’s chair, her basket got caught on it. Pulling violently to free it, she turned the chair around quite suddenly.
“You are getting more awkward every day, Trina,” Nika said crossly.
Cornelli blushed. She felt as if these words were meant for her as well. She must be just as awkward in Nika’s eyes as Trina was. The latter failed to excuse herself and from embarrassment became more clumsy in her movements. Cornelli understood this perfectly; that was what she always did, she knew it quite well.