“I don’t know.”

“Oh, you know well enough.  Pupils always know that.  In what do you have the best marks?”

“In religion.”

“Now, you see, you do know after all.  Well, that is very fine.  I was not so good in it, but it was probably due to the instruction.  We had only a young man licensed to preach.”

“We had, too.”

“Has he gone away?”

Annie nodded.

“Why did he leave?”

“I don’t know.  Now we have the preacher again.”

“And you all love him dearly?”

“Yes, and two of the girls in the highest class are going to change their religion.”

“Oh, I understand; that is fine.  And how is Johanna?”

“Johanna brought me to the door of the house.”

“Why didn’t you bring her up with you?”

“She said she would rather stay downstairs and wait over at the church.”

“And you are to meet her there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I hope she will not get impatient.  There is a little front yard over there and the windows are half overgrown with ivy, as though it were an old church.”

“But I should not like to keep her waiting.”

“Oh, I see, you are very considerate, and I presume I ought to be glad of it.  We need only to make the proper division of the time—­Tell me now how Rollo is.”

“Rollo is very well, but papa says he is getting so lazy.  He lies in the sun all the time.”

“That I can readily believe.  He was that way when you were quite small.  And now, Annie, today we have just seen each other, you know; will you visit me often?”

“Oh, certainly, if I am allowed to.”

“We can take a walk in the Prince Albrecht Garden.”

“Oh, certainly, if I am allowed to.”

“Or we may go to Schilling’s and eat ice cream, pineapple or vanilla ice cream.  I always liked vanilla best.”

“Oh, certainly, if I am allowed to.”

At this third “if I am allowed to” the measure was full.  Effi sprang up and flashed the child a look of indignation.

“I believe it is high time you were going, Annie.  Otherwise Johanna will get impatient.”  She rang the bell and Roswitha, who was in the next room, entered immediately.  “Roswitha, take Annie over to the church.  Johanna is waiting there.  I hope she has not taken cold.  I should be sorry.  Remember me to Johanna.”

The two went out.

Hardly had Roswitha closed the door behind her when Effi tore open her dress, because she was threatened with suffocation, and fell to laughing convulsively.  “So that is the way it goes to meet after a long separation.”  She rushed forward, opened the window and looked for something to support her.  In the distress of her heart she found it.  There beside the window was a bookshelf with a few volumes of Schiller and Koerner on it, and on top of the volumes of poems, which were of equal height, lay a Bible