Royal flush [antikvár]

I ((^HE lay in bed, hugging her shoulders, her knees drawn up to her thin chest, her toes cramped close together with the cold. Sometimes she stretched down her hands to rub them and then she could feel her knees jerking against her ribs. She was small for her age and if she did not lie stretched out in bed she would never grow up to be tall and straight as a princess should be. She was not quite straight; one shoulder was a little higher than the other (but only a very little, she was told). But she could not stretch out in this cold. The single thin blanket had been folded four times to cover her, and if she kicked or turned there would be a fresh draught at some corner. So she lay still except for rubbing her feet, and kept her nose just under the blanket in spite of its tickling and peeped out over the edge of it to see the hard grey snow that had been encrusted for so many days now against the window-pane j to see her mother, in her shabby old green dress, stoop over the fireplace from time to time and poke and turn over the single lump of dull red coal and feed it with little bits of stick, then kneel down and blow upon it till a few sparks shot up and a lively crackling noise told that one of the sticks had caught a flame. Her mother held out her hands to it, thin ringless hands that were blue at the tips, then straightened her back with a little sigh, rose and went back to the table where she sat writing, writing, till the child in the bed had long since ceased to count the number of times she dipped her quill into the ink-horn. The flame died down. The white quill was now the only thing that moved in the darkening room, its faint scratching the only sound. A little time ago the clock in the courtyard had struck three, and yet it was growing dark, the days were in such a hurry to end. At last the figure at the table rose, came over to the child in the bed, and tucked the folded blanket more closely round her. She moved quickly and with a little pounce, like a cat that has never quite ceased to be a kitten. She was a very small woman, her face 3