Page:Magdalen by J S Machar.pdf/124

 and Mrs. Heimburg, as her mother, once upon a time, used to devour Marlitt.

Of our poets she values the poems of Jablonský and Hálek.

She borrows them somewhere, sighs over them, and in a clear hand-writing copies them into a gilt-edged album. Two hours daily she sews for her trousseau, doing this in good faith, filled with expectations.

In the evening she takes a walk on the common with her girl friends, exchanging confidences with them, their anxieties, their dreams, but not all of them: in the depth of her little soul some hero is always hidden, a baron, a count, a dignitary, perhaps a doctor. She has two or three platonic love affairs with students; she is protected from the pitfalls and persecutions of the provincial Don Juans, not by the eye of her mother, though she keeps a sharp lookout on her,