as they grow old, hauling an increasing number of anniversaries along with them, rolling them up as they go, dragging at each remove a lengthening chain, as your dear Goldsmith says,—­and if he didn’t, or it wasn’t, you’ll rebuke me and tell me who did and what it was, for you know I’ve no books here, except those two that are married as securely on one’s tongue as Tennyson and Browning, or Arnold Bennet and his, I imagine reluctant, bride, H. G. Wells,—­I mean Shakespeare and the Bible.

I went into Hilda Seeberg’s room the other day to ask her for some pins, and found her sitting in front of a photograph of her father, a cross-looking old man with a twirly moustache and a bald head; and she had put a wreath of white roses round the frame and tied it with a black bow, and there were two candles lit in front of it, and Hilda had put on a black dress, and was just sitting there gazing at it with her hands in her lap.  I begged her pardon, and was going away again quickly, but she called me back.

“I celebrate,” she said.

“Oh,” said I politely, but without an idea what she meant.

“It is my Papa’s birthday today,” she said, pointing to the photograph.

“Is it?” I said, surprised, for I thought I remembered she had told me he was dead.  “But didn’t you say—­”

“Yes.  Certainly I told you Papa was dead since five years.”

“Then why—?”

“But liebes Fraulein, he still continues to have birthdays,” she said, staring at me in real surprise, while I stared back at her in at least equally real surprise.

“Every year,” she said, “the day comes round on which Papa was born.  Shall he, then, merely because he is with God, not have it celebrated?  And what would people think if I did not?  They would think I had no heart.”

After that I began to hope there would be a cake, for they have lovely birthday cakes here, and it is the custom to give a slice of them to every one who comes near you.  So I looked round the room out of the corners of my eyes, discreetly, lest I should seem to be as greedy as I was, and I lifted my nose a little and waved it cautiously about, but I neither saw nor smelt a cake.  Frau Berg had a birthday three days ago, and there was a heavenly cake at it, a great flat thing with cream in it, that one loved so that first one wanted to eat it and then to sit on it and see all the cream squash out at the sides; but evidently the cake is the one thing you don’t have for your birthday after you are dead.  I don’t want to laugh, darling mother, and I know well enough what it is to lose one’s beloved Dad, but you see Hilda had shown me her family photographs only the other day, for we are making friends in a sort of flabby, hesitating way, and when she got to the one of her father she said with perfect frankness that she hadn’t liked him, and that it had been an immense relief when he died.  “He prevented my doing anything,” she said, frowning at the photograph, “except that which increased his comforts.”