together high above her head, her mother would occasionally glance up from her needlework, though always but for a moment and that, too, furtively, because she did not wish to show how fascinating she considered her own child, although in this feeling of motherly pride she was fully justified.  Effi wore a blue and white striped linen dress, a sort of smock-frock, which would have shown no waist line at all but for the bronze-colored leather belt which she drew up tight.  Her neck was bare and a broad sailor collar fell over her shoulders and back.  In everything she did there was a union of haughtiness and gracefulness, and her laughing brown eyes betrayed great natural cleverness and abundant enjoyment of life and goodness of heart.  She was called the “little girl,” which she had to suffer only because her beautiful slender mother was a full hand’s breadth taller than she.

Effi had just stood up again to perform her calisthenic exercises when her mother, who at the moment chanced to be looking up from her embroidery, called to her:  “Effi, you really ought to have been an equestrienne, I’m thinking.  Always on the trapeze, always a daughter of the air.  I almost believe you would like something of the sort.”

“Perhaps, mama.  But if it were so, whose fault would it be?  From whom do I get it?  Why, from no one but you.  Or do you think, from papa?  There, it makes you laugh yourself.  And then, why do you always dress me in this rig, this boy’s smock?  Sometimes I fancy I shall be put back in short clothes yet.  Once I have them on again I shall courtesy like a girl in her early teens, and when our friends in Rathenow come over I shall sit in Colonel Goetze’s lap and ride a trot horse.  Why not?  He is three-fourths an uncle and only one-fourth a suitor.  You are to blame.  Why don’t I have any party clothes?  Why don’t you make a lady of me?”

“Should you like me to?”

“No.”  With that she ran to her mother, embraced her effusively and kissed her.

“Not so savagely, Effi, not so passionately.  I am always disturbed when I see you thus.”

At this point three young girls stepped into the garden through the little iron gate in the churchyard wall and started along the gravel walk toward the round bed and the sundial.  They all waved their umbrellas at Effi and then ran up to Mrs. von Briest and kissed her hand.  She hurriedly asked a few questions and then invited the girls to stay and visit with them, or at least with Effi, for half an hour.  “Besides, I have something else that I must do and young folks like best to be left to themselves.  Fare ye well.”  With these words she went up the stone steps into the house.