Paulina’s house was overflowing with riotous festivity.  Avoiding the front door, Kalman ran to the back of the house, and making entrance through the window, there waited for his sister.  Soon she came in.

“Oh, Kalman!” she cried, throwing her arms about him and kissing him, “such a feast as I have saved for you!  And you are cold.  Your poor fingers are frozen.”

“Not a bit of it, Irma,” said the boy—­they always spoke in Russian, these two, ever since the departure of their father—­“but I am hungry, oh! so hungry!”

Already Irma was flying about the room, drawing from holes and corners the bits she had saved from the feast for her brother.  She spread them on the bed before him.

“But first,” she cried, “I shall bring to the window the hot stew.  Paulina,” the children always so spoke of her, “has kept it hot for you,” and she darted through the door.

After what seemed to Kalman a very long time indeed, she appeared at the window with a covered dish of steaming stew.

“What kept you?” said her brother impatiently; “I am starved.”

“That nasty, hateful, little Sprink,” she said.  “Here, help me through.”  She looked flushed and angry, her “burnin’ brown eyes” shining like blazing coals.

“What is the matter?” said Kalman, when he had a moment’s leisure to observe her.

“He is very rough and rude,” said the girl, “and he is a little pig.”

Kalman nodded and waited.  He had no time for mere words.

“And he tried to kiss me just now,” she continued indignantly.

“Well, that’s nothing,” said Kalman; “they all want to do that.”

“Not for months, Kalman,” protested Irma, “and never again, and especially that little Sprink.  Never!  Never!”

As Kalman looked at her erect little figure and her flushed face, it dawned on him that a change had come to his little sister.  He paused in his eating.

“Irma,” he said, “what have you done to yourself?  Is it your hair that you have been putting up on your head?  No, it is not your hair.  You are not the same.  You are—­” he paused to consider, “yes, that’s it.  You are a lady.”

The anger died out of Irma’s brown eyes and flushed face.  A soft and tender and mysterious light suffused her countenance.

“No, I am not a lady,” she said, “but you remember what father said.  Our mother was a lady, and I am going to be one.”

Almost never had the children spoken of their mother.  The subject was at once too sacred and too terrible for common speech.  Kalman laid down his spoon.

“I remember,” he said after a few moments’ silence.  A shadow lay upon his face.  “She was a lady, and she died in the snow.”  His voice sank to a whisper.  “Wasn’t it awful, Irma?”

“Yes, Kalman dear,” said his sister, sitting down beside him and putting her arms about his neck, “but she had no pain, and she was not afraid.”