was the risk I ran in lingering, I started down the little path
leading to the arbour and the principal part of the garden,
going, it is true, on tiptoe, and very much frightened
by the rustling of my petticoats, but determined to see what I
had come to see and not to be scared away by phantoms.

How regretfully did I think at that moment of the
petticoats of my youth, so short, so silent, and so woollen!
And how convenient the canvas shoes were with the india rubber soles,
for creeping about without making a sound! Thanks to them I
could always run swiftly and unheard into my hiding-places,
and stay there listening to the garden resounding with cries
of "Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Come in at once to your lessons!"
Or, at a different period, "Ou etes-vous donc, petite sotte?"
Or at yet another period, "Warte nur, wenn ich dich erst habe!"
As the voices came round one corner, I whisked in my noiseless
clothes round the next, and it was only Fraulein Wundermacher,
a person of resource, who discovered that all she needed for my
successful circumvention was galoshes. She purchased a pair,
wasted no breath calling me, and would come up silently,
as I stood lapped in a false security lost in the contemplation
of a squirrel or a robin, and seize me by the shoulders
from behind, to the grievous unhinging of my nerves.
Stealing along in the fog, I looked back uneasily once
or twice, so vivid was this disquieting memory, and could
hardly be reassured by putting up my hand to the elaborate
twists and curls that compose what my maid calls my Frisur,
and that mark the gulf lying between the present and the past;
for it had happened once or twice, awful to relate and to remember,
that Fraulein Wundermacher, sooner than let me slip through