uth was
that when Marianna stole out of bed in order to go to her lover, the
child would sit up in bed and call out, "Where are you going,
Marianna?" and there was such a strange note of reproach and admonition
in her voice, that the girl shuddered and did not venture to go to
Jendrek. How had the child found it out?

So Mrs. Tiralla had her bed brought up to her daughter's room. Her
husband cursed and raged, for hitherto he had at least had his wife
next to him on the same floor. But she insisted upon having her own
way. She said that Roeschen wanted care, and mustn't sleep alone. And he
saw that she was right.

At night, when the house was so quiet that the ticking of the big clock
sounded like peals of thunder and her husband's snores like a saw-mill
hard at work, Mrs. Tiralla would sit by her child's bed. She would hold
her hand--a small, narrow, delicate-looking hand with blue veins--and
they would whisper together about the joys of Paradise. Whilst all
around was joyless--the dark night, the lonely farm buried in deep
snow, the solitude in which a soul so often gets lost--those two would
whisper together about the joys of Paradise--about nothing else.

The heavenly world in which Mrs. Tiralla had also [Pg 83] lived as a
child had once more drawn near to her by means of Rosa. She could very
well understand what occupied the child's thoughts to the exclusion of
everything else. And that was right, for she was to be a saint. Was she
not almost one now? There was a rapt expression in Rosa's eyes, when
she used to tell her mother about what she had seen, about the Holy
Mother and the Child Jesus, and about her beautiful, beautiful guardian
angel who always sat at her bedside when she was asleep. A short time
before, she had suddenly awaked in the night, but had been too tired
to open her eyes properly, and she had found the angel bending over
her--such a beautiful angel in a long white garment.

Mrs. Tiralla knew all about it. It had been she, and the white garment
was her nightdress, which was long and fine, like those worn by smart
ladies. But she let the child remain in her belief. Why undeceive her?
And after that she used to creep every night to Rosa's bed and disturb
her sleep by laying her hand on her head and bending over her as if she
were her guardian angel, to the child's and her own great delight. She
loved doing it. She even practised her part, so that she grew more and
more proficient in it every nigh