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Show Ill Chapter 16 On Friday Hilde looked pinched and wan, although she claimed to feel in perfect health. "Do you see the flowers, Geist?" she asked suddenly as we were shaping the loaves for the second baking. "Oh, I know they can't be there, yet I see them so clearly on the walls of the shop." "Flowers!" She hung her head sheepishly. "Somehow I knew you wouldn't- see them, because there are no flowers, are there? Yet the colors are so bright, all orange and yellow and the sweetest blue - they are so lovely that my heart aches." "Hilde, you're sick!" "I am not sick, Geist. Why do you keep insisting that I am, when I tell you over and over again that I feel fine? If you say anything to my father about the flowers, I will no longer be your friend." Then she did something which frightened me, although I had grown somewhat used to her strange behavior- She took off her shoe, saying that there was a stone in it. She shook the shoe, put it on, walked a few steps, frowned, took it off and shook it again. She did this over and over. When I had counted twelve times that she repeated the action, she burst into tears and cried, "Oh, I will never get it out! And my foot burns so!" Master Hermann heard her crying and came out into the shop. "What is it, daughter?" he asked. |