ed, she [Pg 296] would sit down on his bed. How often she had had
to do that as a child, and he had always been so affectionate to her in
those days. Then she would say "Daddy," and stroke his hair as she used
to do. Oh, she was quite sure it would be all right, for she had been
praying for it so fervently.

But when her father stared at her with his dull, yet fierce eyes, she
lost her assurance. "I wanted--I----" she stammered. She would have
liked to cry aloud, he looked so awful. No, that was not her daddy,
whose hair she had smoothed, on whose cheeks she had imprinted
kisses--first on the right cheek and then on the left--her daddy
who had called her, "My star, my little red-haired girl, my wee
birdie, my sun, the key which is to open the door of heaven for me, my
consolation."

She did not know how to begin, so she sat on the other chair near the
table and gazed at him intently with her sad eyes. She had thrown the
pieces of glass, which she had collected in her apron, into the peat
basket near the stove, and now she wrapped her apron round her hands,
for she shivered with cold, although the room was so stifling. What she
had undertaken to do was too difficult after all; oh, it was her dread
of him that made her feel so cold. She had never, never seen anything
so horrible as this man who was her father. He used to be big, but now
he seemed to have grown small; his coat was much too large for him
across the shoulders and hung round him. A horrid grin made his lips
droop, and his purple nose positively shone in his pale face, that was
of a dirty yellow colour. The rims of his eyelids were puffy and turned
outwards. But the worst of all was his eyes. Oh, those eyes!

Rosa felt as though she must protect herself from [Pg 297] that
well-nigh lifeless glance, which at that moment, however, had something
glittering, even brutish, in it.

What was her father thinking of? Whom did he take her for? She gave a
start. "Ha, ha! Marianna," he chuckled, stretching out a shaking finger
towards her.

He touched her. "Ha, ha!--hope you're enjoying yourself--ha, ha!"

She had to keep a firm hold of herself so as not to scream aloud, and
her hands closed over each other tightly under her apron. The mere fact
of folding her hands calmed her. She had so often prayed for strength,
and she was sure that He would not forsake her now. She felt as though
she were the maiden whom she had been so fond of reading about in the
book of hol