other
contents, which were knives. After a while, I remember, the handkerchief
being brought to light on Sundays to make room for a successor, and
being manifestly perfectly clean, we came to an agreement that it
should only be changed on the first and third Sundays in the month, on
condition that I promised to turn it on the other Sundays. My governess
said that the outer folds became soiled from the mere contact with the
other things in my pocket, and that visitors might catch sight of the
soiled side if it was never turned when I wished to blow my nose in
their presence, and that one had no right to give one's visitors shocks.
"But I never do wish----" I began with great earnestness. "Unsinn," said
my governess, cutting me short.

After the first thrills of joy at being there again had gone, the
profound stillness of the dripping little shrubbery frightened me. It
was so still that I was afraid to move; so still, that I could count
each drop of moisture falling from the oozing wall; so still, that when
I held my breath to listen, I was deafened by my own heart-beats. I made
a step forward in the direction where the arbour ought to be, and the
rustling and jingling of my clothes terrified me into immobility. The
house was only two hundred yards off; and if any one had been about,
the noise I had already made opening the creaking door and so foolishly
apostrophising my handkerchief must have been noticed. Suppose an
inquiring gardener, or a restless cousin, should presently loom through
the fog, bearing down upon me? Suppose Fraulein Wundermacher should
pounce upon me suddenly from behind, coming up noiselessly in her
galoshes, and shatter my castles with her customary triumphant "Fetzt
halte ich dich aber fest!" Why, what was I thinking of? Fraulein
Wundermacher, so big and masterful, such an enemy of day-dreams, such
a friend of das Praktische, such a lover of creature comforts, had died
long ago, had been succeeded long ago by others, German sometimes, and
sometimes English, and sometimes at intervals French, and they too had
all in their turn vanished, and I was here a solitary ghost. "Come,
Elizabeth," said I to myself impatiently, "are you actually growing
sentimental over your governesses? If you think you are a ghost, be glad
at least that you are a solitary one. Would you like the ghosts of
all those poor women you tormented to rise up now in this gloomy place
against you? And do you intend to stand here till