Since there was no time left before the midday meal to buy a roast in honor of the festive occasion, dinner consisted of cabbage as usual, with the addition of a mountain of cakes from the confectioner's, to which the girls helped themselves before the meal in order to lay some aside for days of less plenty.

This was the first evidence of their housekeeperly thrift.

Mrs. Asmussen beamed with motherly joy and tenderness.

"Well," she said, "did I exaggerate when I told you about these glorious creatures? Too bad I had to do without them for so long. But I am modest in my demands, and I am glad enough to get what I do. I know their hearts draw them now to their father, now to their mother, because they cannot make up their minds to deprive either of us permanently of the gift of their pure filial love."

She was sitting between the girls, and she pressed a hand of each. All three looked into one another's eyes devotedly.

The absent pater familias was remembered touchingly. Their gay, talented father, the girls said, intended to give up his large business, to a.s.sume the management of extensive farms in the south of Russia at the urgent invitation of influential patrons.

Later, in Mrs. Asmussen's gloomier hours, it transpired that that "pock-marked scoundrel" had had to scurry off because of some questionable notes, and hide in Odessa until the atmosphere in the north cleared.

To Lilly's unpracticed eye the girls were as like as two sparrows--saucy, greedy, inconstant, and amorous. It was only after a time that she learned to distinguish between them. Lona, the older, who possessed some beauty of a coa.r.s.e kind, had the ways of a clutching, grasping barmaid, and was the sharper of the two, usually dragging her sister Mi in tow, whose chief characteristic was a sort of flabby drollness.

In their treatment of Lilly they observed for the time being the pacific att.i.tude of suspicion willing to bide its time. Hints were not omitted to inform a certain person that they would soon learn what position to take and whether there was to be peace or war.

When they were finally convinced that Lilly was shy and harmless, the waves of their tender confidences met over her head.

It now became the regular thing for all three of them to sit on the edge of the bed until late at night with their corsets open and their knees drawn up to their chins, talking, talking, talking, while they sucked candies bought on the sly, or dressed one another's hair. Beautiful souls poured forth confessions. Whispered confidences about love adventures and man-baiting flowed on steadily, flooding Lilly's pure fancy with a turbid stream of s.e.xual mysteries.

What the Asmussen girls liked above all was to have their bodies admired.

"When I turn this way, isn't the set of my shoulders cla.s.sic?"

"Haven't I a marble bosom?"

"If I weren't so bashful, I'd take off my shirt and show you my hips.

They are like a G.o.ddess's."

They made less frequent appeals for criticism of their features.

"We've gotten so many compliments about our good looks that we can't have any doubts on that score."

Nevertheless when cold weather set in, and necessitated the wearing of woolen scarfs over their heads, they did not scorn to discuss the truly Greek way their hair had of growing low on their foreheads, or the seductive curves of their mouths.

They could also be severely self-critical.

"Our eyes are not beautiful, we know. Yours, for instance, are much lovelier. But whether _you_ cast sheep's eyes at anybody or not, it's all the same. Now, if _we_ just chuck a little sidelong glance--you'd think no one could possibly notice it--why, in a jiffy they're after us like mad."

Their iridescent, cattish eyes would twinkle with the pleasant sense of unbounded power and triumph over the weakness of that strong animal man.

The advice they dispensed liberally to Lilly might be summed up in one sentence: "Do what you please, but don't surrender yourself."

They laid no restraint upon themselves in retailing spicy stories, which set Lilly's pulse to bounding, and in which they proved their absolute seriousness in the observance of this motto.

They manifested a strong sensual craving. One of them once remarked:

"My highest ideal is to be queen of the bees, but to have no children."

The other, who seemed inclined to ethical speculations, rejoined vivaciously:

"My highest ideal is to be a nun and horribly immoral."

She pursued the theme, entering into all details after the manner of the Renaissance narrators, while Lilly's pious soul trembled and shuddered.

Their libertinism of thought notwithstanding, all their hopes and dreams centered about marriage.

To marry, as quickly as possible and as advantageously as possible, was salvation, career, a specific for all ills, earthly bliss, and eternal happiness.

"That is, he must be _old_, he must be _rich_, and he must be _stupid_."

This trinity embodied all their demands of fate. As others invest their husbands-to-be with supernatural virtues, these girls revelled in picturing their future spouses' infirmities and in recounting the tricks they meant to play upon them by virtue of their bodily and spiritual superiority.

They were not always agreed as to the ways and means of obtaining this precious possession so absolutely indispensable to life. A favorite subject of debate between them was: "Is it expedient, or is it not expedient, to compromise oneself with the man of one's choice?"

Lona, whose daring in hatching difficult schemes of action knew no bounds, upheld the positive side. Mi, who wished to be sure where she trod, inclined to the negative.

"If you knew those male milksops half as well as I do," Lona scolded, "you'd realize that the best way to catch them is through fear. Make them sin, and twist their sin about their necks like a halter. That's the only way to be sure of them."

"It's very odd," Mi returned with inexorable logic, "that you haven't practised what you preach, because if you had, you'd long ago--"

Discretion bade her break off. Her sister's fingers, crooked ready to scratch, boded no good.

Only a week after their arrival a love tilt took place between them, in which hair puffs and petticoat strings flew about, and from which Mi emerged with a laceration which Lilly had to treat with vinegar compresses the rest of the night.

The cause of their contention was a "swell" who had followed them on their afternoon walk, and who, according to Mi, had been discouraged from coming closer because her sister had not responded sufficiently to his advances.

Lona a.s.serted the principle that one must have nothing at all to do with so-called "swells," while Mi was of the opinion that he would have been good enough for a husband at any rate.

Strolling through the streets and permitting themselves to be accosted soon became their chief and daily occupation. Lilly, who had credited, and been greatly disturbed by, the threats they first made that they would a.s.sume the management of the business, soon realized she had nothing to apprehend in this regard.

They slept until nine, and took two hours for dressing. Then they went out for their morning walk to make the necessary estimates of the gentlemen of the garrison, who at that hour of the day promenaded in groups near the main guard.

If the first half of the day was dedicated to the military, the second half was devoted chiefly to ordinary citizens.

It goes without saying that afternoon coffee was taken nowhere else than at Frangipani's confectionery shop, where a few lieutenants and a number of city officials and young lawyers gathered to play chess or skat; and where, too, many a more dashing high school teacher came to display his kinship with the proper world of fashion.

After this hour, spiced by all sorts of sweets, followed the promenade at twilight, which proved highly advantageous for establishing possible connections, and provided the subjects needed for discussion at home.

It would not be stating the full truth to say that Mrs. Asmussen brought a loving sympathy to bear in her judgment of this kind of life.

Certainly not. The mutual adulation of the first few days had given place to a period of sultriness, when cutting remarks flashed in the murky atmosphere like streaks of lightning. Then a season of protracted storm set in, and mishaps occurred in swift succession, gradually becoming so purely a matter of course that even Lilly, who at first had wept and screamed along with the other three, began to consider this the normal condition of the Asmussen household. Abusive epithets of unsuspected vigor flew hither and thither, and the place resounded with cuffings. Even the broom, which in the beginning had not been given a thought, was now drawn into its strictly limited field of activity.

Peace did not come until evening, when Mrs. Asmussen's medicine a.s.serted its rights. The two girls might have taken advantage of her oblivion to give free play to their desires, had not their highly developed sense of propriety strictly forbidden going out at night.

"Persons meeting us would take us for fast girls," they said, "and then no wedding bells for us."

One would scarcely believe with what a number of conventions the young ladies circ.u.mscribed their apparently unrestrained existence.