looked exactly like a country servant,
a farmhouse servant. She drank her coffee noisily and furtively--she
looked extraordinary, thought Miriam, and took comfort. The Martins'
brown bows appeared on their necks instead of cresting their heads-it
improved them, Miriam thought. What regular features they had. Bertha
looked like a youth--like a musician. Her hair was loosened a little at
the sides, shading the corners of her forehead and adding to its height.
It shone like marble, high and straight. Emma's hair hung round her
like a shawl. 'Lisbeth, Gretchen... what was that lovely German name...
hild... Brunhilde...

Talk had begun again. Miriam hoped they had not noticed her. Her
"Braten" shot up the lift.

"Lauter Unsinn!" announced Clara.

"We've all got to do our hair in clash... clashishsher Knoten, Hendy,
all of us," said Jimmie judicially, sitting forward with her plump hands
clasped on the table. Her pinnacle of hair looked exactly as usual.

"Oh, really." Miriam tried to make a picture of a classic knot in her
mind.

"If one have classic head one can have classic knot," scolded Clara.

"Who have classic head?"

"How many classic head in the school of Waldstrasse?"

Elsa gave a little neighing laugh. "Classisch head, classisch Knote."

"That is true what you say, Clarah."

The table paused.

"Dites-moi--qu'est-ce-que ce terrible classique notte? Dites!"

No one seemed prepared to answer Mademoiselle's challenge.

Miriam's mind groped... classic--Greece and Rome--Greek knot....
Grecian key... a Grecian key pattern on the dresses for the sixth form
tableau--reading Ruskin... the strip of glass all along the window space
on the floor in the large room--edged with mosses and grass--the mirror
of Venus....

"Eh bien? Eh bien!"

... Only the eldest pretty girls... all on their hands and knees looking
into the mirror....

"Classische Form--Griechisch," explained Clara.

"Like a statue, Mademoiselle."

"Comment! Une statue! Je dois arranger mes cheveux comme une statue?
Oh, ciel!" mocked Mademoiselle, collapsing into tinkles of her sprite
laughter.... "Oh-la-la! Et quelle statue par exemple?" she trilled,
with ironic eyebrows, "la statue de votre Kaisere Wilhelm der Grosse
peut-etre?"

The Martins' guffaws led the laughter.

"Mademoisellekin with her hair done like the Kaiser Wilhelm," pealed
Jimmie.

Only Clara remained grave in wrath.

"Einfach," she quoted bitterly, "Simple--says Lily, so