too, Johanna, and I would
wager my last pfennig that you have a good deal of attention paid to
you. I am still very young, but I know that much. Besides, I have a
girl friend, who was also so blonde, a regular flaxen blonde, even
blonder than you, and she was a preacher's daughter."

"Oh, yes."

"I beg you, Johanna, what do you mean by 'oh yes?' It sounds very
sarcastic and strange, and you have nothing against preachers'
daughters, have you?--She was a very pretty girl, as even our
officers thought, without exception, for we had officers, red hussars,
too. At the same time she knew very well how to dress herself. A black
velvet bodice and a flower, a rose or sometimes heliotrope, and if she
had not had such large protruding eyes--Oh you ought to have seen
them, Johanna, at least this large--" Effi laughingly pulled down her
right eye-lid--"she would have been simply a beauty. Her name was
Hulda, Hulda Niemeyer, and we were not even so very intimate. But if I
had her here now, and she were sitting there, yonder in the corner of
the little sofa, I would chat with her till midnight, or even longer.
I am so homesick"--in saying this she drew Johanna's head close to her
breast--"I am so much afraid."

"Oh, that will soon be overcome, your Ladyship, we were all that way."

"You were all that way? What does that mean, Johanna?"

"If your Ladyship is really so much afraid, why, I can make a bed for
myself here. I can take the straw mattress and turn down a chair, so
that I have something to lean my head against, and then I can sleep
here till morning, or till his Lordship comes home."

"He doesn't intend to disturb me. He promised me that specially."

"Or I can merely sit down in the corner of the sofa."

"Yes, that might do perhaps. No, it will not, either. His Lordship
must not know that I am afraid, he would not like it. He always wants
me to be brave and determined, as he is. And I can't be. I was always
somewhat easily influenced.--But, of course, I see plainly, I must
conquer myself and subject myself to his will in such particulars, as
well as in general. And then I have Rollo, you know. He is lying just
outside the threshold."

Johanna nodded at each statement and finally lit the candle on Effi's
bedroom stand. Then she took the lamp. "Does your Ladyship wish
anything more?"

"No, Johanna. The shutters are closed tight, are they not?"

"Merely drawn to, your Ladyship. Otherwise it would be so dark and
stu