The first grey shafts of dawn that shone through the curtains of the girls' bedroom were beginning to take a rosy hue. The starlings had begun to chatter outside the window, and the young swallows trilled softly in the eaves. A mighty volume of sound, coming from the courtyard, seemed for a moment to fill the whole universe with noise and unrest, and then, with three single resounding strokes, to come to an end. While Elly slept on, with rounded cheek and right ear resting in the hollow of her hand, in undisturbed slumber, Hertha lay with wide-open eyes, holding the counterpane between her teeth, and let the clang of the call-bell, which generally used to hunt her out of bed at once, die on her ear. She had not been able to go to sleep again after the night's great event. Elly, when the first outbreak of joy was over, and after she had hazarded a few guesses as to what "presents" her brother had brought with him, had nestled her head down on the pillows peacefully, but Hertha had stayed in a sitting position, thinking and thinking without ceasing. Often she had pictured to herself what this home-coming ought to be, and now it had happened quite differently from what she had expected. Everything always did happen differently from what you expected. So much wisdom her young life had taught her long ago. It dated from the day when her beautiful mother had been carried away from her in her shroud. Papa was dead too, and Hertha thanked God for that often. There was a hardness in her nature which made her lips snap together at the thought of him. Now she was living amongst strangers, and felt herself at home. Her stepmother's people had become her own.