clusters that almost touched her as she swept through. At once she remembered the chain, seized it, and hung it around her neck. Next she put on a black kerchief, and placed the chain over it; for it looked better on black. Still sitting on her bed, she reflected her image in a small hand-mirror:—could it be possible that she was so beautiful? She stood up to arrange her hair, and take another look at herself in the glass; but, remembering her mother, who as yet knew nothing, she made haste; she must go right down and tell her about it. Just as she had finished dressing, and was about hanging the chain round her neck again, she fell to wondering what her mother would say and what all the people would say, and what she should answer when they asked why she wore this costly chain. As the question would be a very reasonable one, the thought kept repeating itself with more and more seriousness, until at last she found a little box, laid the chain in it, thrust the box in her pocket, and felt, for the first time in her life, poor.
She did not go to her usual duties that morning. Above the town, near the spot where she had received the chain, she sat down with it in her hand, feeling as if she had stolen it.
That evening she waited behind the garden
