Pointed Roofs · Chapter 6 (5/5)

Standing near and large he scrutinised her vague gaze.

“And sensitive to light, too. You were vairy, vairy blonde, even more blonde than you are now, as a child, mademoiselle?”

“Na guten Tag, Herr Pastor.”

Fräulein Pfaff’s smiling voice sounded from the little door.

Pastor Lahmann stepped back.

Miriam was pleased at the thought of being grouped with him in the eyes of Fräulein Pfaff. As she took her glasses from his outstretched hand she felt that Fräulein would recognise that they had established a kind of friendliness. She halted for a moment at the door, adjusting her glasses, amiably uncertain, feeling for something to say.

Pastor Lahmann was standing in the middle of the room examining his nails. Fräulein, at the window, was twitching a curtain into place. She turned and drove Miriam from the room with speechless waiting eyes.

The sunlight was streaming across the hall. It seemed gay and homelike. Pastor Lahmann had made her forget she was a governess. He had treated her as a girl. Fräulein’s eyes had spoiled it. Fräulein was angry about it for some extraordinary reason.