f the room looked now and again
gloomily out into the garden. Miriam did not want to write letters. She
sat, pen in hand, and note-paper in front of her, feeling that she loved
the atmosphere of these Saturday afternoons. This was her second. She
had been in the school a fortnight--the first Saturday she had spent
writing to her mother--a long letter for everyone to read, full of first
impressions and enclosing a slangy almost affectionate little note for
Harriett. In her general letter she had said, "If you want to think
of something jolly, think of me, here." She had hesitated over that
sentence when she considered meal-times, especially the midday meal, but
on the whole she had decided to let it stand--this afternoon she felt it
was truer. She was beginning to belong to the house--she did not want to
write letters--but just to sit revelling in the sense of this room full
of quietly occupied girls--in the first hours of the weekly holiday. She
thought of strange Ulrica somewhere upstairs and felt quite one of the
old gang. "Ages" she had known all these girls. She was not afraid of
them at all. She would not be afraid of them any more. Emma Bergmann
across the table raised a careworn face from her two lines of large neat
lettering and caught her eye. She put up her hands on either side of her
mouth as if for shouting.

"_Hendchen,_" she articulated silently, in her curious lipless way,
"mein liebes, liebes, Hendchen."

Miriam smiled timidly and sternly began fumbling at her
week's letters--one from Eve, full of congratulations and
recommendations--"Keep up your music, my dear," said the conclusion,
"and don't mind that little German girl being fond of you. It is
impossible to be too fond of people if you keep it all on a high level,"
and a scrawl from Harriett, pure slang from beginning to end. Both these
letters and an earlier one from her mother had moved her to tears and
longing when they came. She re-read them now unmoved and felt aloof from
the things they suggested. It did not seem imperative to respond to them
at once. She folded them together. If only she could bring them all for
a minute into this room, the wonderful Germany that she had achieved. If
they could even come to the door and look in. She did not in the least
want to go back. She wanted them to come to her and taste Germany--to
see all that went on in this wonderful house, to see pretty, German
Emma, adoring her--to hear the music that was everywh