. We'll put his bunda round him, and they will strap some
poles to his chair, so that they can carry him more easily. They
offered to do it. It was to be a surprise for you for your farewell
to-morrow: but I had to tell you, because of getting the bunda out and
seeing whether it is too moth-eaten to wear."

While Irma went on talking in her querulous, acid way, Elsa's eyes had
quickly filled with tears. How good people were! how thoughtful! Was it
not kind of Moritz and Jeno and the others to have thought of giving her
this great pleasure?

To have her poor old father near her, after all, when she was saying
farewell to all her maidenhood's friends! And what a joy it would be to
him!--one that would brighten him through many days to come.

Oh! people were good! It was monstrously ungrateful to be unhappy when
one lived among these kind folk.

"Where is the bunda, mother?" she asked eagerly. "I'll see to it at
once. And if the moths are in it, why I must just patch the places up so
that they don't show. Where is the bunda, mother?"

Irma thought a moment, then she frowned, and finally shrugged her
shoulders.

"How do I know?" she said petulantly; "isn't it in your room?"

"No, mother. I haven't seen it since father wore it last."

"And that was two years ago--almost to a day. I remember it quite well.
It was quite chilly, and your father put on his bunda to go down the
street as far as the Jew's house. It was after sunset, I remember. He
came home and went to bed. The next morning he was stricken. And I put
the bunda away somewhere. Now wherever did I put it?"

She stood pondering for a moment.

"Under his paillasse?" she murmured to herself. "No. In the cupboard?
No."

"In the dower-chest, mother?" suggested Elsa, who knew of old that that
article of furniture was the receptacle for everything that hadn't a
proper place.

"Yes. Look at the bottom," said Irma placidly, "it might be there."

It was getting dark now. Through the open door and the tiny hermetically
closed windows the grey twilight peeped in shyly. The more distant
corner of the little living-room, that which embraced the hearth and the
dower-chest, was already wrapped in gloom.

Elsa bent over the worm-eaten piece of furniture: her hands plunged in
the midst of maize-husks and dirty linen of cabbage-stalks and
sunflower-seeds, till presently they encountered something soft and
woolly.

"Here is the bunda, mother," she said.

"Ah, well!