"Jendrek, Marianna," shouted Mr. Tiralla, at the top of his voice. Was nobody coming to take the horses? Where were those rascals sleeping? And the other men, the day labourers, hadn't come yet. The farmer scolded and groaned when he found that he would have to unharness the horses himself and take them to the stable. Mrs. Tiralla went into the room and called the maid. But Marianna, who always came running so submissively when her mistress called her, did not appear either. The woman grew so angry, that she almost tore the ball-dress off her back, and then let it lie on the floor. Disgraceful, disloyal, shameless [Pg 108] hussy! Where could she be sleeping so sweetly that she neither heard nor saw anything? When Mr. Tiralla came into the room his wife snubbed him as angrily as if he had been Marianna. He tried to appease her. "That'll do, that'll do, my love. We know all about it." He laughed good-naturedly. "They're young, we must excuse them." Oh, so he condoned such things? Perhaps even considered them right? Well, then! There was a strange expression in Mrs. Tiralla's eyes as she stared straight in front of her. She let her husband press a kiss on her neck without feeling it, and then she ran in her petticoat and without anything over her shoulders through the cold house up to her bedroom. There lay Rosa with the feather bed drawn up to her eyes. The woman fell on her knees beside the child's bed, and, burying her head in the bedclothes, she sobbed aloud. Rosa awoke. "Mother, sweet mother?" There was a note of anxious inquiry in her exclamation; was her mother in a good humour again, was she no longer cross as the evening before? "Do you love me?" stammered the sobbing woman. "Tell me that you love me." "Oh, I do love you, I love you so dearly." "Tell me that you'll pray for me. Swear that you'll pray for me--always." "Oh, I'll pray for you. I always pray for you." "Pray for me, pray for me," sobbed the excited woman. "I'll pray with you, perhaps that'll help me. Rosa, my angel"--she covered the child's face with kisses--"we'll pray."