Detective and mystery stories; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
"Hans never came back. All sorts of policemen came into the house,
doctors came, priests came, but no Hans. Mother Duda was buried, I rode
in a coach at the funeral, but still no Hans. The old life was over, and
when the food was all gone from the shelves, I took my little basket and
went out, not meaning to come back again. And I did not. I sold my basket
out; got a handful of pennies and went to the market to get something to
eat. Then I went into a park, where there were benches, and sat down to
rest. I did not know of any place to go to and began to cry, when a lady
stopped before me, and I looked up and saw myself.
"I thought I was dreaming or had the fever again, as when I was sick with
my ear, and I thought it was myself as I would look in heaven, for she
had such beautiful clothes on and looked so happy. But when she talked, I
could see her lips move and I couldn't hear; and I knew that I was just
in the park with my empty basket and my onion and bread, and that the
lady was a lady and no one I knew, only so like what I had seen of myself
in the glass that I was shaking all over, and she was shaking all over,
and neither of us could look away. And still her lips moved, and seeing
her at last look frightened and angry that I didn't answer, I spoke and
said that I was deaf; that I was very sorry that I couldn't hear because
we looked so much alike, though she was a great lady and I was a very,
very poor girl who hadn't any home or any friends, or anything to wear or
eat but what she saw. At this her eyes grew bigger even than before, and
she tried to talk some more, and when I shook my head she took hold of my
arm and began drawing me away, and I went and we got on the cars, and she
took me to a house and into a room where she took away my basket and put
me in a chair, and took off first her hat, then my own, and showed me the
two heads in a glass, and then looked at me so hard that I cried out,
'Sister,' which made her jump up and put her hand on her heart, then look
at me again harder and harder, till I remembered way back in my life, and
I said:
"'When I was a little girl I had a sister they called my twin. That was
before I lived in the woods with the gipsies. Are you that sister grown
up? The place where we played together had a tall fence with points at
the top. There were flowers and there were bushes with currants on them
all round the fence.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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