“You can. Will you, as I am not allowed to go out, take this and put it into a letter-box?”
“But I cannot make out why there should be any trouble.”
“It is so easy, and Heinrich—the poor, the sad, the inconsolable—wants to get it at once.”
Again I was a remarkably silly girl; but I took Riki’s letter and posted it for her. She devoured me with kisses, and immediately recovered her spirits.
The next day she was better and able to go out, and when she returned home she presented me with a magnificent box of French bonbons. Now, I was exceedingly partial to those sweets. Riki often came into our little sitting-room, and all the girls began to remark on our friendship.
“It is so unlike the Comtesse Riki to take up passionately with any one girl!” said Rosalind when this sort of thing had been going on for a few weeks and we were all talking of the Easter holidays.
The great point of whether I was to go home or not had not yet been decided. Hermione knew she must remain at the school; Augusta would probably do likewise.
Rosalind went on commenting on my friendship with Riki. After a pause she said, “Of course, she has been at the school for some time; she leaves in the summer.”
“Oh!” I answered; “she told me that she would be here for another year.”
“I think it has been changed. She is not contented; the Baroness will not keep a pupil in the school who shows discontent.”