Lisa and Lottie. Erich Kastner
two girls shook their heads.
“They have never set eyes on each other until today,” said Miss Ursula. “Strange, isn’t it?”
“Why is it strange?” asked the cook. “How could they have set eyes on each other when one comes from Munich and the other from Vienna?”
Mrs. Muther said in a friendly voice, “Two girls who look so alike are sure to be good friends. Don’t stand so far apart. Come, children! Shake hands with each other.”
“No!” cried Lisa and folded her arms behind her back. Mrs. Muther shrugged her shoulders, thought for a moment, and then said, “You can both go.”
Lisa ran to the door, yanked it open, and dashed out. Lottie dropped a curtsy and turned sedately to leave the room.
“Just a moment, Lottie,” said the director. She opened a big book. “I’ll enter your name at once. When and where you were born. And what are your parents’ names.”
“I’ve only got my Mommy,” said Lottie softly.
Mrs. Muther poised her pen. “First, date of birth?”
Lottie walked down the corridor, went up the stairs, opened a door, and entered the locker room. Her trunk was not yet unpacked. She began putting her dresses, slips, sweaters, and socks into the locker assigned to her. Through the open window came the distant sound of children’s laughter.
Lottie held in her hand the photograph of a young woman. She looked at it lovingly and then laid it carefully under her sweaters. When she came to close the locker, her eyes fell on a mirror on the inside of the door. She examined her face gravely and curiously, as though she were seeing it for the first time. Then, with a sudden impulse, she threw back her braids and arranged the hair on top of her head so that it looked more like Lisa Palfy’s.
Somewhere a door slammed. Lottie dropped her hands as though she had been caught doing something wrong.
Lisa was sitting on the garden wall with her friends; her brows were puckered in a frown.
“I wouldn’t stand for it,” said Trudie, a schoolmate from Vienna. “The nerve of her—coming here with your face!”
“Well, what can I do?” asked Lisa angrily.
“Scratch it for her,” suggested Monica.
“The best thing is to bite her nose off,” advised Christine. “Then you’ve got rid of the cause of the trouble in one stroke!” She swung her legs lightheartedly as she spoke.
“Messing up my vacation like this,” muttered Lisa bitterly.
“But she can’t help it,” remarked chubby-faced Steffie. “If somebody came and looked like me, I . . .”
Trudie laughed. “Surely you don’t think anybody would be such a dope as to go around looking like you!”
Steffie sulked. The others laughed. Even Lisa smiled a little.
Then the gong sounded.
“Feeding time for the wild animals!” cried Christine. And the girls jumped down from the wall.
Mrs. Muther remarked to Miss Ursula in the dining room, “We’ll take the bull by the horns and let our little doubles sit together.”
The children came streaming noisily into the hall. There was a scraping of chair legs. Waitresses carried steaming tureens to the tables, and filled the plates eagerly held out to them.
Miss Ursula came up behind Lisa and Trudie and tapped Trudie lightly on the shoulder. “You are to sit by Hilda Storm,” she said.
Trudie turned and started to say something. “But . . .”
“No objections, please.”
Trudie shrugged her shoulders, got up, pouted, and walked away.
Spoons clattered. The chair next to Lisa’s was empty. Everyone stared at it.
Then, as though at a word of command, all eyes turned to the door. Lottie had just come in.
“Here you are at last,” said Miss Ursula. “Come, I’ll show you your place.” She led the demure little girl in braids towards the table. Lisa did not look up; she went on furiously spooning her soup into her mouth. Lottie sat down obediently beside Lisa and took up her spoon, though she felt as though her throat were tied up with a piece of string.
The other girls, fascinated, watched the unusual pair from the corners of their eyes. A calf with two—or even three—heads could not have aroused more curiosity. Plump, chubby-faced Steffie was so thrilled that she forgot to shut her mouth.
Lisa could control herself no longer. And, what’s more, she didn’t want to. With all her strength she kicked out under the table at Lottie’s shin.
Lottie winced with pain, and pressed her lips firmly together.
At the grownups’ table Miss Gerda, one of the counselors, shook her head and said, “I can’t make it out—two absolute strangers and such a remarkable resemblance!”
Miss Ursula said thoughtfully, “Perhaps they’re astrological twins.”
“What on earth are they,” asked Miss Gerda, “astrological twins?”
“I’ve heard there are people who look absolutely alike without being even distantly related. They just happen to be born in the same fraction of the same second.”
“Oh!” murmured Miss Gerda.
Mrs. Muther nodded. “I remember reading of a tailor in London who looked exactly like King Edward VII. You couldn’t tell them apart. Especially as the tailor wore the same kind of pointed beard as the King. King Edward summoned him to Buckingham Palace and had a long talk with him.”
“And they had actually been born in the same second?”
“Yes. By chance they were able to verify it exactly.”
“And what happened after that?” asked Miss Gerda.
“At the King’s wish, the tailor shaved off his beard.”
While the others were laughing, Mrs. Muther looked thoughtfully across to the table where the two girls were sitting. “We’d better give Lottie Horn the bed next to Lisa Palfy,” she said. “They’ll have to get used to each other.”
It was night. All the children were asleep. Except two.
These two had turned their backs to each other and pretended to be fast asleep. But they were lying with eyes wide open, staring into the moonlit room.
Lisa looked crossly at the queer-shaped silver patch the moon had made on her bed. Suddenly she heard someone crying quietly, the sobs muffled in a pillow.
Lottie pressed her hands to her mouth. What was it her mother had said when she left . . . I’m so glad you’re going to spend a few weeks with all those happy children. You are too serious for your age, Lottie. Much too serious. I know it’s not your fault, but mine. It’s because of my work. I’m away from home too much. And when I do get home, I’m tired. And then you haven’t been playing like other children, but washing dishes, cooking, and setting the table. See that you come back home with a lot of smile-wrinkles, my little housekeeper! . . . And now she was lying here in a strange room, next to a bad-tempered girl who hated her because they happened to look alike. She sighed softly. And she was supposed to get smile-wrinkles! Lottie continued to sob softly to herself.
Suddenly her hair was awkwardly stroked by a strange little hand.
Lottie stiffened with fright. Lisa’s hand went on shyly stroking her hair.
The moon looked in through the big dormitory window and saw two little girls lying in their beds, side by side, not daring to look at each