Hanno’s Doll by Evelyn Piper

of wounds you had inflicted.
    They had given him Felix’s office, and the secretary, Miss Mildred, had appeared three days later, produced by the departmental secretary, Miss Grace Metal. (He named her Miss Mildred because there was something old-fashioned about her face.) Miss Mildred had been brought all the way from Miss Metal’s home town because she had theatrical ambitions. She had come flying from Clifton, Idaho, into Felix’s office because she hoped that Hanno Dietrich would be her big chance to make Broadway.
    So there, on that morning after, sitting at the shabby desk in the little outer office, was Miss Mildred.
    She was the first person he saw in the college. Having arrived at the old building in the middle of an hour, the halls were deserted. Philip, of course, had immediately disappeared to inform the dean. “Good morning, Miss Mildred,” he had said, then “T-t-t!” he had said, because she was sitting at her desk doing nothing.
    She had turned to him and he had seen the unmistakable signs of sleeplessness, so touching at her age, so ugly at his. (How he must have looked that terrible morning!) He had seen the shadows under her lids, blue-white, like watered milk. “T-t! Just sitting there, Miss Mildred.”
    â€œI finished the letters you gave me, Mr. Dietrich.”
    â€œAlready?”
    â€œI stayed late last night and finished everything.”
    â€œThere was no need to do that, Miss Mildred. You are a good child. But I didn’t mean just sitting and not typing, Miss Mildred, I meant just sitting and not knitting. Do you think I haven’t seen you stuffing away your guilty knitting in that drawer?” He acted it out for her—the start when she heard him (he walked lightly like many fat men), the needles pushed into the wool, the desk drawer opened and closed.
    Miss Mildred said, “Oh, it’s finished.”
    She turned her head away but not before he caught the shine of tears. “Miss Mildred …”
    â€œIt’s finished. I finished it.” She gave a sob and put her head down on her desk.
    He himself had been finished—done in—but how could he have resisted the tender nape of Miss Mildred’s neck? He put his hand on Miss Mildred’s shoulder and gentled it until her sobbing quieted; then he gave her his big handkerchief and told her to blow her nose and then go to the washroom and wash her poor face. He had considered giving her the day off, even though he believed that everything should be as ordinary as possible on this day after. If he gave her the day off, he had imagined, she and her troubles would go straight to Miss Metal, the departmental secretary whose protégée Miss Mildred certainly was.
    Now he wished that he had done so. Now that it was too late, he wished he had. But he had been undone by the pitiful, childish, bent neck, and therefore stood at her desk to wait for her to return from the washroom and to help her if possible, because Miss Mildred, in a way, reminded him of Puppchen. Not the distinction, the elegant bone structure, of course; like a hundred thousand other young American girls, but still with Puppchen’s look of helplessness to distinguish her from the others. That was why he had had to try to help her, Hanno decided. Miss Mildred had not looked like the one hundred thousand other American girls who one and all seemed to him so capable of taking care of themselves that they made his inescapably paternal blood run cold.
    He had realized, too, that if Miss Mildred’s trouble wore pants (or had not worn pants), Miss Metal would not be a sympathetic listener. Prunes and prisms and Puritanism, Miss Grace Metal. He and Miss Mildred had worked late several evenings and on those occasions Miss Metal had appeared to make sure he had not swallowed the girl up for his dinner, oh, yes!
    At the thought of taking on Miss Mildred’s troubles, he had simply collapsed into Miss