Suddenly, much quicker than I had expected, a tall teenager was standing by my side;she had grown taller than I.The ritual became rather silent, we no longer chattered away from one subject to another. I thought about her room full of posters and knick-knacks, how it had been full of treasures in bottles and boxes, white pebbles, a copper brooch, colored drawings, the treasures of a child who still knew nothing of money, who wanted to be read aloud to and who looked anxiously at a spider in her room and asked,“Would he want to be my friend?”