But my father was ready for me. Without interrupting his singing,
or altering his devout expression, he put his hand slowly down
and gave me a hard pinch--not a playful pinch, but a good hard
unmistakeable pinch, such as I had never imagined possible,
and then went on serenely to the next hallelujah.
For a moment I was petrified with astonishment.
Was this my indulgent father, my playmate, adorer, and friend?
Smarting with pain, for I was a round baby, with a nicely stretched,
tight skin, and dreadfully hurt in my feelings, I opened my mouth
to shriek in earnest, when my father's clear whisper fell on my ear,
each word distinct and not to be misunderstood, his eyes as before
gazing meditatively into space, and his lips hardly moving,
"Elizabeth, wenn du schreist, kneife ich dich bis du platzt."
And he finished the verse with unruffled decorum--

"Will Satan mich verschlingen,
So lass die Engel singen
Hallelujah!"

We never had another difference. Up to then he had been
my willing slave, and after that I was his.

With a smile and a shiver I turned from the border and its memories
to the door in the wall leading to the kitchen garden, in a corner
of which my own little garden used to be. The door was open, and I stood
still a moment before going through, to hold my breath and listen.
The silence was as profound as before. The place seemed deserted;
and I should have thought the house empty and shut up but for the carefully
tended radishes and the recent footmarks on the green of the path.
They were the footmarks of a child. I was stooping down to examine