I comforted Bessy with the assurance that I would make the damaged portrait all right again—there were special colours for that.
"But she must not sit again," hastily intervened her mother. She was afraid I should begin coming to the house again and spoil the good match.
"And I haven't got that dress either," said Bessy.
It certainly was a pretty dress. Would that she had never had it!
I assured them, however, that I would be able to put the picture to rights at home, all by myself. And with that I put it in my pocket. I never went back there again.
The mother and the aunt ostentatiously occupied themselves with Muki, expressing all the time their regretful sympathy, at which he was beside himself for fury.
I beat a retreat without any attempt to say good-bye. But Bessy ran after me, and, overtaking me in the doorway, seized my hand, and whispered in an ardent voice, "You'll put me to rights, won't you?"
"The portrait? oh yes!"
An hour afterwards I was sitting on the steamer and gazing at the lingering smoke which hid my native town from my eyes. It was just as if I were returning from a funeral.