Amalia’s Secret + 

“Judge for yourself,” said Olga, “I warn you it sounds quite simple, one can’t comprehend at first why it should be of any importance. There’s a great official in the Castle called Sortini.” “I’ve heard of him already,” said K., “he had something to do with bringing me here.” “I don’t think so,” said Olga, “Sortini hardly ever comes into the open. Aren’t you mistaking him for Sordini, spelt with a d?” “You’re quite right,” said K., “Sordini it was.” “Yes,” said Olga, “Sordini is well-known, one of the most industrious of the officials, he’s often mentioned; Sortini on the other hand is very retiring and quite unknown to most people. More than three years ago I saw him for the first and last time. It was on the third of July at a celebration given by the Fire Brigade, the Castle too had contributed to it and provided a new fire-engine. Sortini, who was supposed to have some hand in directing the affairs of the Fire Brigade, but perhaps he was only deputising for someone else⁠—the officials mostly hide behind each other like that, and so it’s difficult to discover what any official is actually responsible for⁠—Sortini took part in the ceremony of handing over the fire-engine. There were of course many other people from the Castle, officials and attendants, and true to his character Sortini kept well in the background. He’s a small, frail, reflective-looking gentleman, and one thing about him struck all the people who noticed him at all, the way his forehead was furrowed; all the furrows⁠—and there were plenty of them although he’s certainly not more than forty⁠—were spread fanwise over his forehead, running towards the root of his nose, I’ve never seen anything like it. Well then, we had that celebration. Amalia and I had been excited about it for weeks beforehand, our Sunday clothes had been done up for the occasion and were partly new, Amalia’s dress was specially fine, a white blouse foaming high in front with one row of lace after the other, our mother had taken every bit of her lace for it. I was jealous, and cried half the night before the celebration. Only when the Bridge Inn landlady came to see us in the morning⁠—” “The Bridge Inn landlady?” asked K. “Yes,” said Olga, “she was a great friend of ours, well, she came and had to admit that Amalia was the finer, so to console me she lent me her own necklace of Bohemian garnets. When we were ready to go and Amalia was standing beside me and we were all admiring her, my father said: ‘Today, mark my words, Amalia will find a husband’; then, I don’t know why, I took my necklace, my great pride, and hung it round Amalia’s neck, and wasn’t jealous any longer. I bowed before her triumph and I felt that everyone must bow before her, perhaps what amazed us so much was the difference in her appearance, for she wasn’t really beautiful, but her sombre glance, and it has kept the same quality since that day, was high over our heads and involuntarily one had almost literally to bow before her. Everybody remarked on it, even Lasemann and his wife who came to fetch us.” “Lasemann?” asked K. “Yes, Lasemann,” said Olga, “we were in high esteem, and the celebration couldn’t well have begun without us, for my father was the third in command of the Fire Brigade.” “Was your father still so active?” asked K. “Father?” returned Olga, as if she did not quite comprehend, “three years ago he was still relatively a young man, for instance when a fire broke out at the Herrenhof he carried an official, Galater, who is a heavy man, out of the house on his back at a run. I was there myself, there was no real danger, it was only some dry wood near a stove which had begun to smoke, but Galater was terrified and cried for help out of the window, and the Fire Brigade turned out, and father had to carry him out although the fire was already extinguished. Of course Galater finds it difficult to move and has to be careful in circumstances like that. I’m telling you this only on father’s account; not much more than three years have passed since then, and look at him now.” Only then did K. become aware that Amalia was again in the room, but she was a long way off at the table where her parents sat, she was feeding her mother who could not move her rheumaticky arms, and admonishing her father meanwhile to wait in patience for a little, it would soon be his turn. But her admonition was in vain, for her father, greedily desiring his soup, overcame his weakness and tried to drink it first out of the spoon and then out of the bowl, and grumbled angrily when neither attempt succeeded; the spoon was empty long before he got it to his lips, and his mouth never reached the soup, for his drooping moustache dipped into it and scattered it everywhere except into his mouth. “And have three years done that to him?” asked K., yet he could not summon up any sympathy for the old people, and for that whole corner with the table in it he felt only repulsion. “Three years,” replied Olga slowly, “or, more precisely, a few hours at that celebration. The celebration was held on a meadow by the village, at the brook; there was already a large crowd there when we arrived, many people had come in from neighbouring villages, and the noise was bewildering. Of course my father took us first to look at the fire-engine, he laughed with delight when he saw it, the new fire-engine made him happy, he began to examine it and explain it to us, he wouldn’t hear of any opposition or holding back, but made every one of us stoop and almost crawl under the engine if there was something there he had to show us, and he smacked Barnabas for refusing. Only Amalia paid no attention to the engine, she stood upright beside it in her fine clothes and nobody dared to say a word to her, I ran up to her sometimes and took her arm, but she said nothing. Even today I cannot explain how we came to stand for so long in front of the fire-engine without noticing Sortini until the very moment my father turned away, for he had obviously been leaning on a wheel behind the fire-engine all the time. Of course there was a terrific racket all round us, not only the usual kind of noise, for the Castle had presented the Fire Brigade with some trumpets as well as the engine, extraordinary instruments on which with the smallest effort⁠—a child could do it⁠—one could produce the wildest blasts; to hear them was enough to make one think the Turks were there, and one could not get accustomed to them, every fresh blast made one jump. And because the trumpets were new everybody wanted to try them, and because it was a celebration, everybody was allowed to try. Right at our ears, perhaps Amalia had attracted them, were some of these trumpet blowers. It was difficult to keep one’s wits about one, and obeying father and attending to the fire-engine was the utmost we were capable of, and so it was that Sortini escaped our notice for such a long time, and besides we had no idea who he was. ‘There is Sortini,’ Lasemann whispered at last to my father⁠—I was beside him⁠—and father, greatly excited, made a deep bow, and signed to us to do the same. Without having met him till now father had always honoured Sortini as an authority in Fire Brigade matters, and had often spoken of him at home, so it was a very astonishing and important matter for us actually to see Sortini with our own eyes. Sortini however paid no attention to us, and in that he wasn’t peculiar, for most of the officials hold themselves aloof in public, besides he was tired, only his official duty kept him there. It’s not the worst officials who find duties like that particularly trying, and anyhow there were other officials and attendants mingling with the people. But he stayed by the fire-engine and discouraged by his silence all those who tried to approach him with some request or piece of flattery. So it happened that he didn’t notice us until long after we had noticed him. Only as we bowed respectfully and father was making apologies for us did he look our way and scan us one after another wearily, as if sighing to find that there was still another and another to look at, until he let his eyes rest on Amalia, to whom he had to look up, for she was much taller than he. At the sight of her he started and leapt over the shaft to get nearer to her, we misunderstood him at first and began to approach him, father leading the way, but he held us off with uplifted hand and then waved us away. That was all. We teased Amalia a lot about having really found a husband, and in our ignorance we were very merry the whole of that afternoon. But Amalia was more silent than usual ‘She’s fallen head over ears in love with Sortini,’ said Brunswick, who is always rather vulgar and has no comprehension of natures like Amalia’s. Yet this time we were inclined to think that he was right, we were quite mad that day, and all of us, even Amalia, were as if stupefied by the sweet Castle wine when we came home about midnight.” “And Sortini?” asked K. “Yes, Sortini,” said Olga, “I saw him several times during the afternoon as I passed by, he was sitting on the engine shaft with his arms folded, and he stayed there till the Castle carriage came to fetch him. He didn’t even go over to watch the fire-drill at which father, in the very hope that Sortini was watching, distinguished himself beyond all the other men of his age.” “And did you hear nothing more from him?” asked K. “You seem to have a great regard for Sortini.” “Oh yes, regard,” said Olga, “oh yes, and hear from him we certainly did. Next morning we were roused from our heavy sleep by a scream from Amalia; the others rolled back into their beds again, but I was completely awake and ran to her. She was standing by the window holding a letter in her hand which had just been given in through the window by a man who was still waiting for an answer. The letter was short, and Amalia had already read it, and held it in her drooping hand; how I always loved her when she was tired like that! I knelt down beside her and read the letter. Hardly had I finished it when Amalia after a brief glance at me took it back, but she couldn’t bring herself to read it again, and tearing it in pieces she threw the fragments in the face of the man outside and shut the window. That was the morning which decided our fate. I say ‘decided,’ but every minute of the previous afternoon was just as decisive.” “And what was in the letter?” asked K. “Yes, I haven’t told you that yet,” said Olga, “the letter was from Sortini addressed to the girl with the garnet necklace. I can’t repeat the contents. It was a summons to come to him at the Herrenhof, and to come at once, for in half an hour he was due to leave. The letter was couched in the vilest language, such as I had never heard, and I could only half guess its meaning from the context. Anyone who didn’t know Amalia and saw this letter must have considered a girl who could be written to like that as dishonoured, even if she had never had a finger laid on her. And it wasn’t a love letter, there wasn’t a tender word in it, on the contrary Sortini was obviously enraged because the sight of Amalia had disturbed him and distracted him in his work. Later on we pieced it all together for ourselves; evidently Sortini had intended to go straight to the Castle that evening, but on Amalia’s account had stayed in the village instead, and in the morning, being very angry because even overnight he hadn’t succeeded in forgetting her, had written the letter. One couldn’t but be furious on first reading a letter like that, even the most cold-blooded person might have been, but though with anybody else fear at its threatening tone would soon have got the upper hand, Amalia only felt anger, fear she doesn’t know, neither for herself nor for others. And while I crept into bed again repeating to myself the closing sentence, which broke off in the middle, ‘See that you come at once, or else⁠—!’ Amalia remained on the window-seat looking out, as if she was expecting further messengers and were prepared to treat them all as she had done the first.” “So that’s what the officials are like,” said K. reluctantly, “that’s the kind of type one finds among them. What did your father do? I hope he protested energetically in the proper quarter, if he didn’t prefer a shorter and quicker way of doing it at the Herrenhof. The worst thing about the story isn’t the insult to Amalia, that could easily have been made good, I don’t know why you lay such exaggerated stress upon it; why should such a letter from Sortini shame Amalia forever?⁠—which is what one would gather from your story, but that’s a sheer impossibility, it would have been easy to make up for it to Amalia, and in a few days the whole thing might have blown over, it was himself that Sortini shamed, and not Amalia. It’s Sortini that horrifies me, the possibility of such an abuse of power. The very thing that failed this one time because it came naked and undisguised and found an effective opponent in Amalia, might very well succeed completely on a thousand other occasions in circumstances just a little less favourable, and might defy detection even by its victim.” “Hush,” said Olga, “Amalia’s looking this way.” Amalia had finished giving food to her parents and was now busy taking off her mother’s clothes. She had just undone the skirt, hung her mother’s arms round her neck, lifted her a little, while she drew the skirt off, and now gently set her down again. Her father, still affronted because his wife was being attended to first, which obviously only happened because she was even more helpless than he, was attempting to undress himself; perhaps, too, it was a reproach to his daughter for her imagined slowness; yet although he began with the easiest and least necessary thing, the removal of the enormous slippers in which his feet were loosely stuck, he could not get them pulled off at all, and wheezing hoarsely was forced to give up trying, and leaned back stiffly in his chair again. “But you don’t realise the really decisive thing,” said Olga, “you may be right in all you say, but the decisive thing was Amalia’s not going to the Herrenhof; her treatment of the messenger might have been excused, it could have been passed over; but it was because she didn’t go that the curse was laid upon our family, and that turned her treatment of the messenger into an unpardonable offence, yes, it was even brought forward openly later as the chief offence.” “What!” cried K. at once, lowering his voice again, as Olga raised her hands imploringly, “do you, her sister, actually say that Amalia should have run to the Herrenhof after Sortini?” “No,” said Olga, “Heaven preserve me from such a suspicion, how can you believe that? I don’t know anybody who’s so right as Amalia in everything she does. If she had gone to the Herrenhof I should of course have upheld her just the same; but her not going was heroic. As for me, I confess it frankly, had I received a letter like that I should have gone. I shouldn’t have been able to endure the fear of what might happen, only Amalia could have done that. For there were many ways of getting round it, another girl, for instance, might have decked herself up and wasted some time in doing it and then gone to the Herrenhof only to find that Sortini had left, perhaps to find that he had left immediately after sending the messenger, which is very probable, for the moods of the gentlemen are fleeting. But Amalia neither did that nor anything else, she was too deeply insulted, and answered without reserve. If she had only made some pretence of compliance, if she had but crossed the threshold of the Herrenhof at the right moment, our punishment could have been turned aside, we have very clever advocates here who can make a great deal out of a mere nothing, but in this case they hadn’t even the mere nothing to go on, there was, on the contrary, the disrespect to Sortini’s letter and the insult to his messenger.” “But what is all this about punishment and advocates?” said K. “Surely Amalia couldn’t be accused or punished because of Sortini’s criminal proceedings?” “Yes,” said Olga, “she could, not in a regular suit at law, of course; and she wasn’t punished directly, but she was punished all right in other ways, she and our whole family, and how heavy the punishment has been you are surely beginning to understand. In your opinion it’s unjust and monstrous, but you’re the only one in the village of that opinion, it’s an opinion favourable to us, and ought to comfort us, and it would do that if it weren’t so obviously based on error. I can easily prove that, and you must forgive me if I mention Frieda by the way, but between Frieda and Klamm, leaving aside the final outcome of the two affairs, the first preliminaries were much the same as between Amalia and Sortini, and yet, although that might have shocked you at the beginning, you accept it now as quite natural. And that’s not merely because you’re accustomed to it, custom alone couldn’t blunt one’s plain judgment, it’s simply that you’ve freed yourself from prejudice.” “No, Olga,” said K., “I don’t see why you drag in Frieda, her case wasn’t the same, don’t confuse two such different things, and now go on with your story.” “Please don’t be offended,” said Olga, “if I persist in the comparison, it’s a lingering trace of prejudice on your part, even in regard to Frieda, that makes you feel you must defend her from a comparison. She’s not to be defended, but only to be praised. In comparing the two cases I don’t say they’re exactly alike, they stand in the same relation as black to white, and the white is Frieda. The worst thing one can do to Frieda is to laugh at her, as I did in the bar very rudely⁠—and I was sorry for it later⁠—but even if one laughs it’s out of envy or malice, at any rate one can laugh. On the other hand, unless one is related to her by blood, one can only despise Amalia. Therefore the two cases are quite different, as you say, but yet they are alike.” “They’re not at all alike,” said K. and he shook his head stubbornly, “leave Frieda out of it, Frieda got no such fine letter as that of Sortini’s, and Frieda was really in love with Klamm, and, if you doubt that, you need only ask her, she loves him still.” “But is that really a difference?” asked Olga. “Do you imagine Klamm couldn’t have written to Frieda in the same tone? That’s what the gentlemen are like when they rise from their desks, they feel out of place in the ordinary world and in their distraction they say the most beastly things, not all of them, but many of them. The letter to Amalia may have been the thought of a moment, thrown on the paper in complete disregard for the meaning to be taken out of it. What do we know of the thoughts of these gentlemen? Haven’t you heard of, or heard yourself, the tone in which Klamm spoke to Frieda? Klamm’s notorious for his rudeness, he can apparently sit dumb for hours and then suddenly bring out something so brutal that it makes one shiver. Nothing of that kind is known of Sortini, but then very little is known of him. All that’s really known about him is that his name is like Sordini’s. If it weren’t for that resemblance between the two names probably he wouldn’t be known at all. Even as the Fire Brigade authority apparently he’s confused with Sordini, who is the real authority, and who exploits the resemblance in name to push things on to Sortini’s shoulders, especially any duties falling on him as a deputy, so that he can be left undisturbed to his work. Now when a man so unused to society as Sortini is, suddenly finds himself in love with a village girl, he’ll naturally take it quite differently from, say, the joiner’s apprentice next door. And one must remember, too, that between an official and a village cobbler’s daughter there’s a great gulf fixed which has to be somehow bridged over, and Sortini tried to do it in that way, where someone else might have acted differently. Of course we’re all supposed to belong to the Castle, and there’s supposed to be no gulf between us, and nothing to be bridged over, and that may be true enough on ordinary occasions, but we’ve had grim evidence that it’s not true when anything really important crops up. At any rate, all that should make Sortini’s methods more comprehensible to you, and less monstrous; compared with Klamm’s they’re comparatively reasonable, and even for those intimately affected by them much more endurable. When Klamm writes a loving letter it’s much more exasperating than the most brutal letter of Sortini’s. Don’t mistake me, I’m not venturing to criticise Klamm, I’m only comparing the two, because you’re shutting your eyes to the comparison. Klamm’s a kind of tyrant over women, he orders first one and then another to come to him, puts up with none of them for long, and orders them to go just as he ordered them to come. Oh, Klamm wouldn’t even give himself the trouble of writing a letter first. And in comparison with that is it so monstrous that Sortini, who’s so retiring, and whose relations with women are at least unknown, should condescend for once to write in his beautiful official hand a letter, however abominable? And if there’s no distinction here in Klamm’s favour, but the reverse, how can Frieda’s love for him establish one? The relation existing between the women and the officials, believe me, is very difficult, or rather very easy to determine. Love always enters into it. There’s no such thing as an official’s unhappy love affair. So in that respect it’s no praise to say of a girl⁠—I’m referring to many others besides Frieda⁠—that she gave herself to an official only out of love. She loved him and gave herself to him, that was all, there’s nothing praiseworthy in that. But you’ll object that Amalia didn’t love Sortini. Well, perhaps she didn’t love him, but then after all perhaps she did love him, who can decide? Not even she herself. How can she fancy she didn’t love him, when she rejected him so violently, as no official has ever been rejected? Barnabas says that even yet she sometimes trembles with the violence of the effort of closing the window three years ago. That is true, and therefore one can’t ask her anything; she has finished with Sortini, and that’s all she knows; whether she loves him or not she does not know. But we do know that women can’t help loving the officials once they give them any encouragement, yes, they even love them beforehand, let them deny it as much as they like, and Sortini not only gave Amalia encouragement, but leapt over the shaft when he saw her; although his legs were stiff from sitting at desks he leapt right over the shaft. But Amalia’s an exception, you will say. Yes, that she is, that she has proved in refusing to go to Sortini, that’s exception enough, but if in addition she weren’t in love with Sortini, she would be too exceptional for plain human understanding. On that afternoon, I grant you, we were smitten with blindness, but the fact that in spite of our mental confusion we thought we noticed signs of Amalia’s being in love, showed at least some remnants of sense. But when all that’s taken into account, what difference is left between Frieda and Amalia? One thing only, that Frieda did what Amalia refused to do.” “Maybe,” said K., “but for me the main difference is that I’m engaged to Frieda, and only interested in Amalia because she’s a sister of Barnabas’s, the Castle messenger, and because her destiny may be bound up with his duties. If she had suffered such a crying injustice at the hands of an official as your tale seemed to infer at the beginning, I should have taken the matter up seriously, but more from a sense of public duty than from any personal sympathy with Amalia. But what you say has changed the aspect of the situation for me in a way I don’t quite understand, but am prepared to accept, since it’s you who tell me, and therefore I want to drop the whole affair, I’m no member of the Fire Brigade, Sortini means nothing to me. But Frieda means something to me, I have trusted her completely and want to go on trusting her, and it surprises me that you go out of your way, while discussing Amalia, to attack Frieda and try to shake my confidence in her. I’m not assuming that you’re doing it with deliberate intent, far less with malicious intent, for in that case I should have left long ago. You’re not doing it deliberately, you’re betrayed into it by circumstances, impelled by your love for Amalia you want to exalt her above all other women, and since you can’t find enough virtue in Amalia herself you help yourself out by belittling the others. Amalia’s act was remarkable enough, but the more you say about it the less clearly can it be decided whether it was noble or petty, clever or foolish, heroic or cowardly; Amalia keeps her motives locked in her own bosom and no one will ever get at them. Frieda, on the other hand, has done nothing at all remarkable, she has only followed her own heart, for anyone who looks at her actions with goodwill that is clear, it can be substantiated, it leaves no room for slander. However, I don’t want either to belittle Amalia or to defend Frieda, all I want is to let you see what my relation is to Frieda, and that every attack on Frieda is an attack on myself. I came here of my own accord, and of my own accord I have settled here, but all that has happened to me since I came, and, above all, any prospects I may have⁠—dark as they are, they still exist⁠—I owe entirely to Frieda, and you can’t argue that away. True, I was engaged to come here as a Land Surveyor, yet that was only a pretext, they were playing with me, I was driven out of everybody’s house, they’re playing with me still today; but how much more complicated the game is now that I have, so to speak, a larger circumference⁠—which means something, it may not be much⁠—yet I have already a home, a position and real work to do, I have a promised wife who takes her share of my professional duties when I have other business, I’m going to marry her and become a member of the community, and besides my official connection I have also a personal connection with Klamm, although as yet I haven’t been able to make use of it. That’s surely quite a lot? And when I come to you, why do you make me welcome? Why do you confide the history of your family to me? Why do you hope that I might possibly help you? Certainly not because I’m the Land Surveyor whom Lasemann and Brunswick, for instance, turned out of their house a week ago, but because I’m a man with some power at my back. But that I owe to Frieda, to Frieda who is so modest that if you were to ask her about it, she wouldn’t know it existed. And so, considering all this, it seems that Frieda in her innocence has achieved more than Amalia in all her pride, for may I say that I have the impression that you’re seeking help for Amalia. And from whom? In the last resort from no one else but Frieda.” “Did I really speak so abominably of Frieda?” asked Olga, “I certainly didn’t mean to, and I don’t think I did, still, it’s possible; we’re in a bad way, our whole world is in ruins, and once we begin to complain we’re carried further than we realise. You’re quite right, there’s a big difference now between us and Frieda, and it’s a good thing to emphasise it once in a while. Three years ago we were respectable girls and Frieda an outcast, a servant in the Bridge Inn, we used to walk past her without looking at her, I admit we were too arrogant, but that’s how we were brought up. But that evening in the Herrenhof probably enlightened you about our respective positions today. Frieda with the whip in her hand, and I among the crowd of servants. But it’s worse even than that! Frieda may despise us, her position entitles her to do so, actual circumstances compel it. But who is there who doesn’t despise us? Whoever decides to despise us will find himself in good company. Do you know Frieda’s successor? Pepi, she’s called. I met her for the first time the night before last, she used to be a chamber maid. She certainly outdoes Frieda in her contempt for me. She saw me through the window as I was coming for beer, and ran to the door and locked it, so that I had to beg and pray for a long time and promise her the ribbon from my hair before she would let me in. But when I gave it to her she threw it into a corner. Well, I can’t help it if she despises me, I’m partly dependent on her goodwill, and she’s the barmaid in the Herrenhof. Only for the time being, it’s true, for she certainly hasn’t the qualities needed for permanent employment there. One only has to overhear how the landlord speaks to Pepi and compare it with his tone to Frieda. But that doesn’t hinder Pepi from despising even Amalia, Amalia, whose glance alone would be enough to drive Pepi with all her plaits and ribbons out of the room much faster than her own fat legs would ever carry her. I had to listen again yesterday to her infuriating slanders against Amalia until the customers took my part at last, although only in the kind of way you have seen already.” “How touchy you are,” said K. “I only put Frieda in her right place, but I had no intention of belittling you, as you seem to think. Your family has a special interest for me, I have never denied it; but how this interest could give me cause for despising you I can’t understand.” “Oh, K.,” said Olga, “I’m afraid that even you will understand it yet; can’t you even understand that Amalia’s behaviour to Sortini was the original cause of our being despised?” “That would be strange indeed,” said K., “one might admire or condemn Amalia for such an action, but despise her? And even if she is despised for some reason I can’t comprehend, why should the contempt be extended to you others, her innocent family? For Pepi to despise you, for instance, is a piece of impudence, and I’ll let her know it if ever I’m in the Herrenhof again.” “If you set out, K.,” said Olga, “to convert all the people who despise us you’ll have your work cut out for you, for it’s all engineered from the Castle. I can still remember every detail of that day following the morning I spoke of. Brunswick, who was our assistant then, had arrived as usual, taken his share of the work and gone home, and we were sitting at breakfast, all of us, even Amalia and myself, very gay, father kept on talking about the celebration and telling us his plans in connection with the Fire Brigade, for you must know that the Castle has its own Fire Brigade which had sent a deputation to the celebration, and there had been much discussion about it, the gentlemen present from the Castle had seen the performance of our Fire Brigade, had expressed great approval, and compared the Castle Brigade unfavourably with ours, so there had been some talk of reorganising the Castle Brigade with the help of instructors from the village; there were several possible candidates, but father had hopes that he would be chosen. That was what he was discussing, and in his usual delightful way had sprawled over the table until he embraced half of it in his arms, and as he gazed through the open window at the sky his face was young and shining with hope, and that was the last time I was to see it like that. Then Amalia, with a calm conviction we had never noticed in her before, said that too much trust shouldn’t be placed in what the gentleman said, they were in the habit of saying pleasant things on such occasions, but it meant little or nothing, the words were hardly out of their mouths before they were forgotten, only of course people were always ready to be taken in again next time. Mother forbade her to say things like that, but father only laughed at her precocious air of wisdom, then he gave a start, and seemed to be looking round for something he had only just missed⁠—but there was nothing missing⁠—and said that Brunswick had told him some story of a messenger and a torn-up letter, did we know anything of it, who was concerned in it, and what it was all about? We kept silent; Barnabas, who was as youthful then as a spring lamb, said something particularly silly or cheeky, the subject was changed, and the whole affair forgotten.” + 