“I don’t approve of his saying nothing about that pretty frock you’ve got on! What do you think of it, Wolf? Do you know, when I got here, she was upstairs, crying her lovely eyes out? And all because she thought she hadn’t a proper dress to welcome her grand mother-in-law in! We soon settled that little job, didn’t we, my dear?” And Wolf beheld, to his amazement, his mother putting one of her strong arms caressingly about Gerda’s waist, and Gerda responding to this with a lingering, provocative glance, such as he himself was wont to receive when the girl was in her most docile mood.

“I heard her crying up there in her room,” went on the elder woman, “and I ran straight up, and there she was, pretty as a picture in her white shift, and all the bed covered with frocks! She says she’s had this one since she was sixteen; but it suits her perfectly, doesn’t it, Wolf?”