eached a climax when a number of them
rushed up to wipe out the new line, a saucy, crisp-haired Nubian tossed
the shoe in the air and caught it again, while the rest could not cease
for delight in such a good joke and cried every name they could think of
as that of the lover for whom their companion had so boldly seized a
spoke in Fortune's wheel.

Some spirit of mirth seemed to have taken up his quarters in the draughty
shed; the group round the sketcher was not less noisy than the other. If
a likeness was recognized they were all triumphant, if not they cried the
names of this or that one for whom it might be intended. A storm of
applause greeted a successful caricature of the severest of the
overseers. All who saw it held their sides for laughing, and great was
the uproar when one of the girls snatched away the tablet and the rest
fell upon her to scuffle for it.

Paula had watched all this at first with distant amazement, shaking her
head. How could they find so much pleasure in such folly, in such
senseless amusements? When she was but a little child even she, of
course, could laugh at nothing, and these grown-up girls, in their
ignorance and the narrow limitations of their minds, were they not one
and all children still? The walls of the governor's house enclosed their
world, they never looked beyond the present moment--just like children;
and so, like children, they could laugh.

"Fate," thought she, "at this moment indemnifies them for the misfortune
of their birth and for a thousand days of misery, and presently they will
go tired and happy to bed. I could envy these poor creatures! If it were
permissible I would join them and be a child again."

The comic portrait of the overseer was by this time finished, and a
short, stout wench burst into a fit of uproarious and unquenchable
laughter before any of the rest. It came so naturally, too, from the very
depths of her plump little body that Paula, who had certainly not come
hither to be gay, suddenly caught the infection and had to laugh whether
she would or no. Sorrow and anxiety were suddenly forgotten, thought and
calculation were far from her; for some minutes she felt nothing but that
she, too, was laughing heartily, irrepressibly, like the young healthful
human creature that she was. Ah, how good it was thus to forget herself
for once! She did not put this into words, but she felt it, and she
laughed afresh when the girl who had been sitting apart joined