Once alone with the children, my shyness left me. I shook hands with them and asked a few simple questions which they answered in broken German. After I had taken off my things, I busied myself at once in amusing the children, tired though I was. I built houses of paper on the table, and did various little things to help me to gain some courage. After a few days I grew more reassured, and dropped my shyness even towards the mistress. I could see that she was satisfied with me, and since the children also were very fond of me, I no longer felt afraid of being sent away. I had plenty to do. To take the children to school and to fetch them back again. Also to take them for walks when the weather was fine enough. The darning and sewing I did when they lay asleep. Apart from a burning home-sickness that had taken hold of me and tortured me especially in the evenings I felt quite happy there, and no doubt believed that I had found at last what I had been longing for all my life. There was one thing, however, that darkened the clear horizon of my days: I had not a single decent dress to wear. It would hardly have troubled me, but I knew that my mistress wanted me to be dressed smartly. She had made little remarks sometimes, which, although never addressed directly to me, gave me to understand that she was ashamed for her friends--whose governesses looked so smart that I had mistaken them for mistresses at the beginning--to see me. One day my mistress came into the nursery, and, looking around somewhat discontentedly, said: "The children have been invited to tea, but who shall accompany them?" I looked at her in surprise. "Why, I, of course." "Impossible; you can't go there in that blue dress of yours." I remembered my brother and what he had told me, and started to fret again about being sent away. I had not been there for a whole month, and had not yet received my wages. But my mind was made up that I would buy a dress as soon as I had my money, and I had already looked in all the shop-windows in order to choose one. There were several dresses that I should have liked to buy, but on looking at the price I was so horrified that I avoided the shop-windows for days afterwards. My shoes were wearing out too, and when the thirty-five shillings at last fell due, there were so many great and little things needed that the wonderful thirty-five shillings melted down to a few small coppers before I had been able to think of buying a new dress. One evening, when I was busily putting the children to bed, the master came into the nursery and, after having exchanged a few words with each of the boys, stepped over to where I was standing and touching my blouse he said: "Don't you feel cold in it?" It was a very simple remark, and quite justified too, because it was cold and the blouse was thin, but the look that he threw at me reminded me of coarse and ugly words I had often heard before.