"What is the matter with her? Tell me, Minna! oh, tell me!"
But the nurse shook off her clasping hands. "Let me alone, child. I am in a hurry," she murmured.
Erika advanced a step, hesitated, and then returned to her room, where she found Miss Sophy in great distress, her head crowned with curl-papers, which she cut out of the Modern Free Press every evening and which made her look half like Medusa and half like a porcupine.
"Where are you going?" she asked, seeing that Erika began to dress hurriedly. "To my mother; she is ill."
Miss Sophy gently detained her. "Do not go," she said, softly: "they would not let you in; you would only be in the way, now. Wait a little. Your mother does not want you there." And she wagged her porcupine head with melancholy solemnity as she added, "I believe--I think you will perhaps have a little brother, or sister."
Erika stared at her. This it was, then!
Among the many sad experiences that were to fall to Erika's lot there were none to equal the dull restlessness, the mortal dread mingled with a mysterious, inexpressible emotion, of these hours.
She went on dressing, striving only to be ready quickly, as one dresses when the next house is on fire. Then she seated herself opposite Miss Sophy, at a tottering round table upon which stood a guttering candle.
For a while all was silent; then there was a noise outside the door. The girl sprang up and hurried out, to see a stout, elderly woman in a tall black cap, with the phlegmatic flabby face of a monk, going towards her mother's room. Erika recognized her as the needy widow of a stone-mason; she was wont to doctor both men and cattle in the village. Her name was Frau Jelinek. The scullery-maid who had brought her was just behind her.
They passed Erika without heeding her, and the girl looked after them in a fresh access of dread.