, she examined everything. She found the linen not fine
enough, though the work on it pleased her well. That was Melanie's own
handiwork. As regards books, there was only one in the trunk, a
prayer-book. Czipra opened it and looked into it. There were steel
plates in it. The portrait of a beautiful woman, seven stars round her
head, raising her tear-stained eyes to Heaven: and the picture of a
kneeling youth, round the fair bowed head of whom the light of Heaven
was pouring. Long did she gaze at the pictures. Who could those figures
be?

There were no jewels at all among the new-comer's treasures.

Czipra remarked that Melanie's ear-rings were missing.

"You have left your earrings behind too?" she asked, hiding any want of
tenderness in the question by delivering it in a whisper.

"Our solicitor told me," said Melanie, with downcast eyes, "that those
earrings also were paid for by creditors' money:--and he was right. I
gave them to him."

"But the holes in your ears will grow together; I shall give you some of
mine."

Therewith she ran to her room, and in a few moments returned with a pair
of earrings.

Melanie did not attempt to hide her delight at the gift.

"Why, my own had just such sapphires, only the stones were not so
large."

And she kissed Czipra, and allowed her to place the earrings in her
ears.

With the earrings came a brooch. Czipra pinned it in Melanie's collar,
and her eyes rested on the pretty collar itself: she tried it, looked at
it closely and could not discover "how it was made."

"Don't you know that work? it is crochet, quite a new kind of
fancy-work, but very easy. Come, I will show you right away."

Thereupon she took out two crochet needles and a reel of cotton from her
work-case, and began to explain the work to Czipra: then she gave it to
her to try. Her first attempt was very successful. Czipra had learned
something from the new-comer, and remarked that she would learn much
more from her.

Czipra spent an hour with Melanie and an hour later came to the
conclusion that she was only now beginning--to be a girl.

At supper they appeared with their arms round each other's necks.

The first evening was one of unbounded delight to Czipra.

This girl did not represent any one of those hateful pictures she had
conjured up in the witches' kettle of her imagination. She was no rival;
she was not a great lady, she was a companion, a child of seventeen
years, with whom she could pr