But now Feldmann was singing "Gaudeamus igitur," so the captain joined in too.
"Come along," said Von Wedel, lurching towards Chérie with two glasses in his hand; "come, turtle-dove, Brüdershaft trinken!" He forced one of the glasses into her hand. "You must drink the pledge of brotherhood with us. Like this"—and he made her stand face to face with him, pushing his left arm through hers and raising his glass in his right hand.
Chérie shrank back, seeking refuge behind Louise. But he dragged her forward and caught her by the arm again.
"Obedience!" he roared, scowling at her. "Now sing; 'Lebe, liebe, trinke, schwärme'—and when I get to the words 'froh mit mir,' we clink our glasses together."
"Please not! please not!" implored Chérie.
"Froh mit mir"—repeated he, glaring at her through his heavy lids. And he sang:
Lebe, liebe, trinke schwärme
Und erfreue dich mit mir.
Härme dich wenn ich mich härme
Und sei weider
froh
mit
mir!
At the last three words he clinked his glass against Chérie's. "Drink!" he commanded in a terrible voice. "If you do not drink, it is an insult which must be punished."
With a sob Chérie raised the glass to her lips.
Louise was wringing her hands. "The brute! the brute!" she cried, while Mireille holding her mother's skirts stared wide-eyed at the scene.
Captain Fischer looked across at Louise. "My Samaritan," … he mumbled. "My sister of mercy...." He rose and approached her with a stupefied smile.
Mireille rushed at him like a little fury. "Go away," she screamed, "go away!"
The Herr Kapitän took her not unkindly by the shoulders. "Little girls should be in bed," he said thickly. "My little girls are in bed long ago."
Louise clasped her hands. "I beg you, sir, have pity on us; let us go away.... The house is yours, but let us go away."
"Where do you want to go?" he asked dully.
"To our rooms," said Louise.
"You have no rooms; they are ours," he said, and bending forward he widened his eyes at her significantly.
Louise looked about her like a trapped animal. She saw Von Wedel and Feldmann who had Chérie between them and were forcing her to drink out of their glasses; she saw Glotz seated on the piano-stool looking on with fat, impassive face; she saw the man before her bending forward and leering suggestively, so close that she could feel his hot, acrid breath on her face. The enemy! The man with mud and blood on his feet … he was putting out his hand and touching her–
She fell on her knees and dragged Mireille down beside her! she lifted up her hands and raised her weeping face to him. "Your children … you have children at home … your little girls are in bed and asleep … they are safe … safe, locked in their house.... As God may guard them for you, oh protect us! spare us! Take care of us!… Be kind—be kind!" She dropped forward with her head on his feet—on Claude's slippers—and little Mireille with quick tears rolling down her face looked up at him and touched his sleeve with a trembling hand.
He looked down and frowned. His mouth worked. Yes. He had three yellow-headed little girls in Stuttgart. It was good that they were in Stuttgart and not in Belgium. But they were little German girls, while these were enemies. These were belligerents. Civilians if you will, but still belligerents....
He looked down at the woman's bowed head and fragile heaving shoulders, and he looked at the white, frightened child-face lifted to his. "Belligerents" … he growled, and cleared his throat and frowned. Then his chin quivered. "Get away," he said thickly. "Get away, both of you. Quick. Hide in the cellar—no—not in the cellar, in the stable—in the garden—anywhere. Don't go in the streets. The streets are full of drunken soldiers. Go."
Louise kissed his feet, kissed Claude's slippers, and wept, while Mireille smiled up at him with the smile of a seraph, and thanked and thanked him, not knowing what she thanked him for.
"But—what of Chérie?" gasped Louise, looking round at the frightened wild-rose figure in its white dress, trembling and weeping between the two ribald men.
"You shall take her with you," said Fischer, and he went resolutely across the room and took Chérie by the arm.
"What? What? You old reprobate," roared Feldmann, digging him in the ribs, with peals of coarse laughter. "You have two of them! What more do you want, you hedgehog, you? Leave this one alone."
"You leave her alone, too. I order her to go away." Fischer frowned and cleared his throat and tried to draw Chérie from Feldmann's and Von Wedel's grasp.
"What do you mean?" asked Von Wedel, going close up to Fischer and looking him up and down with provocative and menacing air.
"I mean that you leave her alone," puffed the captain. "Those are my orders, Lieutenant—and if they are not obeyed you shall answer for it."
"You old woman! you old head of a sheep," shouted Von Wedel; "answer for it, shall I? You are drunk; and I'm drunk; and I don't care a snap about your orders." And dragging Chérie's arm from Fischer's grasp he pushed him back and glowered at him.
"Your orders …" stuttered the intoxicated Feldmann, placing his hand on Fischer's shoulder to steady himself, "your orders … direct contradiction with other orders … higher orders …" He wagged his head at Fischer. "The German seal must be set upon the enemy's country.... Go away. Don't be a screeching owl."
"And don't be a head of a sheep," added Von Wedel. "Vae victis! If it isn't you, it'll be somebody else. It'll be old Glotz—look at him … sitting there, all agog, arrectis auribus! Or it will be our drunken men downstairs. Just listen to them!…"
The drunken men downstairs were roaring "Die Wacht am Rhein." Von Wedel's argument seemed to carry conviction.
"Vae victis!" sighed Fischer, swallowing another glass of brandy and looking across the room at the trembling Louise. "If it isn't I … then Glotz … or somebody else … drunken soldiers...."
He went unsteadily towards Louise, who stood clutching at the locked door. "Woe to the vanquished, my poor woman … seal of Germany … higher orders.... Why should I be a head of a sheep?…"
BOOK II
CHAPTER VI
It is pleasant to sit in a quiet English garden on a mild September afternoon, sipping tea and talking about the war and weather, while venturesome sparrows hop on the velvety lawn and a light breeze dances over the flower-beds stealing the breath of the mignonette to carry back at nightfall to the sea.
Thus mused the gentle sisters, Miss Jane and Julia Cony, as they gazed round with serene and satisfied blue eyes on the lawn, the sparrows, the silver tea-set, the buttered toast, and their best friend, Miss Lorena Marshall, who had dropped in to have tea with them and whose gentle brown eyes now smiled back into theirs with the self-same serenity and satisfaction. All three had youthful faces under their soft white hair; all three had tender hearts in their somewhat rigid breasts; all three had walked slender and tall through an unblemished life of undeviating conventionality. They were sublimely guileless, divinely charitable and inflexibly austere.
"It is pleasant indeed," repeated Julia in her rather querulous treble voice. Julia had been delicate in her teens and still retained some of the capricious ways of the petted child. She was the youngest, too—scarcely forty-five—and was considered very modern by her sister and her friend. "Of course the Continent is all very well in its way," she went on. "Switzerland in summer, and Monte Carlo in winter–"
"Oh, Julia," interrupted Miss Jane quickly, "why do you talk about Monte Carlo? We only stayed there forty-five minutes."
"Well, I'm sure I wish we could have stayed there longer," laughed the naughty Julia. "The sea was a dream, and the women's clothes were revelations. But, as I was saying, England is, after all–"
We all know what England is, after all. Still, it is always good to say it and to hear it said. Thus, in the enumeration of England's advantages and privileges a restful hour passed, until the neat maid, Barratt, came to announce the arrival of other visitors. Mrs. Mulholland and her daughter Kitty had driven round from Widford and came rustling across the lawn in beflowered hats and lace veils. Fresh tea was made for them and they brought a new note into the conversation.
"Are you not thinking of taking a refugee?" asked Mrs. Mulholland. "The Davidsons have got one."
"The Davidsons have got one?" exclaimed Miss Marshall.
"The Davidsons have got one?" echoed Miss Jane and Miss Julia Corry.
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Mulholland somewhat acidly. "And I am sure if they can have one in their small house, you can; and we can."
"Refugees are all the rage just now," remarked Kitty. "Everybody who is anybody has them."
"Yes, but the Davidsons …" said Miss Marshall. "Surely they cannot afford it."
"They have dismissed their maid," explained Mrs. Mulholland, "and this poor Belgian woman has to do all their housework."
"Yes; and Molly Davidson says that she is really a countess," added Kitty, "and that she makes the beds very badly."
"Poor soul!" said Miss Jane.
"I certainly think," continued Mrs. Mulholland, "that the Davidsons of all people should not be putting on side with a foreign countess to make their beds for them, while others who have good houses and decent incomes simply look on. In fact," she added, "I have already written to the Committee in Kingsway offering hospitality to a family of two or three."
"That is very generous of you," said Miss Jane; and Miss Julia shyly patted the complacent white-gloved hands reposing in Mrs. Mulholland's lap.
"We had not thought of it ourselves, so far," said Miss Jane. "But if it is our duty to help these unfortunates, we shall certainly do so."
"Of course you will. You are such angels," exclaimed the impulsive Kitty, throwing a muscular arm around Miss Jane's prim shoulders and kissing her cheek. And Miss Jane liked it.
"How does one set about it?" asked Miss Marshall; "I might find room for one, too. In fact I should rather like it. The evenings are so lonely and I used to love to speak French."
Mrs. Mulholland, to whom she had turned, did not answer at once. Then she replied drily: "You can write to the Refugee Committee or the Belgian Consulate. The Davidsons got theirs from the Woman's Suffrage League."
Then there was a brief pause.
"But I hear that the committee is frightfully particular," she went on. "They don't send them just to any one who asks. One must give all sorts of references. In fact," she added, with a chilly little laugh, "it is almost as if one were asking for a situation oneself. They want to know all about you."
There was another brief silence, and then Mrs. Mulholland and Kitty took their leave.
To Miss Julia, who accompanied them to the gate, Mrs. Mulholland remarked, "The idea! Miss Marshall wanting a refugee! With her past!"
"What past?" inquired Miss Julia, wide-eyed and wondering.
"Oh," snapped Mrs. Mulholland, tossing her head, and the white lace veil floating round her sailor-hat waved playfully in the breeze, "when people live abroad so long, there is always something behind it."
She stepped into her motor, followed by the pink-faced, smiling Kitty, and they drove away to pay some other calls.
Miss Julia returned to the lawn with a puckered brow and a perturbed heart. Neither she nor her sister had ever thought of Miss Lorena Marshall's past; Miss Marshall did not convey the impression of having a past—especially not a foreign past, which was associated in Jessie's mind with ideas of the Moulin Rouge and Bal Tabarin. The neat black hat sitting firmly on Miss Marshall's smooth pepper-and-salt hair could never be a descendant of those naughty French petits bonnets which are flung over the mills in moments of youthful folly. Her sensible square-toed boots firmly repelled the idea that the feet they encased could ever have danced adown the flowery slopes of sin.
"I do not believe a word of it," said Miss Julia to herself, and later on to her sister. Miss Jane was indignant at the suggestion. "This village is a hotbed of cats," she said cryptically; and when the vicar looked in after dinner to discuss arrangements for a Church concert they confided in him and asked his opinion. Had he known Miss Lorena Marshall before she came to Maylands? Did he think she had a past—a Continental past?
The vicar thought the suggestions ridiculous and uncharitable.
"Of course," said Miss Jane, toying with her favourite angora cat's ear as he lay purring comfortably in her lap, "we are narrow-minded old maids." The vicar made a deprecating gesture. "Yes, yes, we are. And we like to be sure that our friendships are not misplaced."
"We are narrow-minded old maids," echoed Miss Julia. The two Miss Corrys always said that, partly in order to be contradicted and partly in that curious spirit of humility which in the English heart so closely borders on pride. For is not the acknowledgment of a certain kind of inferiority a sign of unmistakable superiority?
When we say we are a humdrum nation, when we say we are a dull and slow and stodgy nation, do we not in our heart of hearts think that it would be a good thing if other nations took an example from our very faults?
Even so when Miss Corry said, "We are narrow-minded old maids"—she felt with a little twinge of remorse that the statement was not altogether sincere. Did she really, in her heart of hearts, think it narrow-minded to abhor vulgarity, to shun coarseness, to shrink from all that might be considered indecorous or unseemly? Then surely to be narrow-minded was better than to be broad-minded, and she for one would certainly refuse to change her views. Was narrow-mindedness mindedness nowadays not almost a synonym for pure-mindedness?
And—"old maids"! Did she really consider herself and her younger sister old maids? Had they—just because they had chosen to remain unmarried—any of the crotchety notions, the fantastic, ineradicable habits that old maids usually get into? Did they go about with a parrot on their shoulder like Miss Davis? Or dose themselves all day with patent medicines, like the Honourable Harriet Fyle? Did they fret and fuss over their food, or live in constant terror of draughts and burglars? Certainly not. And—come now—did they really feel a day older than when they were twenty-two and twenty-five respectively? Or did they look any older?—except for their hair which, had they chosen, they could easily have touched up with henné or Inecto? Were they not able to do anything, to go anywhere? Were their hearts not as young, and fresh, and ready for love if it happened to come their way, as Kitty Mulholland's or Dolly Davidson's? Did not their elder brothers—the parson and the Judge—always speak of them still as "the girls"?
No. Miss Jane and Miss Julia Corry were not quite sincere when they called themselves "narrow-minded old maids," and accordingly they had qualms and conscience-pricks when they did so.
A week later the two sisters returned Mrs. Mulholland's call. They fluttered into the large drawing room full of the subdued murmur of many voices, and were greeted absent-mindedly by the busy hostess and effusively by Kitty. The Davidsons were there, quite unsuitably attired (remarked Miss Jane to Miss Julia; nobody wore satin at tea), and they were explaining volubly to a group of ladies how it happened that their Belgian countess-refugee had suddenly left them.
"First of all, she was not a countess at all," explained Dolly Davidson.
"And she was not even a Belgian," Mrs. Davidson added, in aggrieved tones. "I cannot understand the W.S.L. sending her to us. Why she confessed before she went away that she was a variety artist from Linz and could only speak German and Czech. We always thought the language she spoke was Flemish. It has been a most unpleasant affair."
Every one was tacitly delighted. Mrs. Davidson had been giving herself such airs of importance with her countess, and now it turned out that she had been playing Lady Bountiful to an alien enemy from a Bohemian Café Chantant. One would have to be super-human not to rejoice. "How did you get rid of her?" asked one of the ladies, discreetly repressing her smiles.
"A villainous-looking man came to fetch her, late in the evening," said poor Mrs. Davidson, blushing. "They made a frightful noise in the hall, quarrelling or something."
"Then they both went upstairs," piped up Dolly Davidson; and pointing to her brother, a lumpish youth who at that moment had his mouth full of cake. "We sent Reggy upstairs to tell them to go away at once. But Reggy only looked through the keyhole and wouldn't come down again until mother fetched him."
"It isn't true," mumbled Reggy.
"Finally we had to send for the police," said Mrs. Davidson, with tears of mortification in her eyes.
Mrs. Mulholland confessed that she felt rather nervous about her own refugees who were expected at any moment. "I wish I could countermand them," she said; but her sympathizing friends all agreed that having asked for them she must keep them when they came.
They arrived the following day—an uninteresting woman, with two torpid boys and a thin girl of fifteen.
The boys ate a great deal, and the girl was uncannily intelligent. Since landing in England they had had it drummed into them that they were heroes; they had been acclaimed with their compatriots as the saviours of Europe; they had had speeches made to them apprising them of the fact that the gratitude of all the world could never repay the debt that civilization owed them. They therefore accepted as their due the attentions and kindness shown them. They ate jam at all their meals and asked for butter with their dinner; they drank red wine and put a great deal of sugar in it; they complained that the coffee was not good. They borrowed Mrs. Mulholland's seal-skin coat and Kitty's silk scarves when they felt chilly, and they sat in the drawing-room writing letters or looking at illustrated papers all day long. They spoke French in undertones among themselves and accepted everything that was provided for them without any undue display of gratitude. Had they not saved Europe? Would Mrs. Mulholland still have a seal-skin coat to her back but for Belgium? Had it not been for King Albert, would not the Uhlans and the Death's Head hussars be sprawling on the Mulholland sofa, eating the Mulholland jam, criticizing the Mulholland coffee? Comment donc!
And had they not themselves, in order to save Europe, given up their home and their business—a stuffy little restaurant (Au Boeuf à la Mode, Épicerie, Commestibles) down a dingy Brussels street?
The restaurant soon became a Grand Hotel in their fond reminiscences. Le souvenir, cet embellisseur, swept the sardine-tins, the candles, the lemons, and the flies from its windows, built up a colonnaded front, added three or four stories and filled them with rich and titled guests.
"What was the name of your hotel?" inquired Mrs. Mulholland. "We stopped in Brussels once on our way to Spa, and I remember that we stayed in a most excellent hotel—The Britannique, or The Metropole, or something."
"Tell them," said Mme. Pitou to her daughter Toinon who acted as interpreter,—"tell them the name of our hotel—in English."
"Restaurant to the Fashionable Beef," said Mademoiselle Pitou; and Madame Pitou sighed and shook her head despondently. "Hotel," she corrected, "not Restaurant. 'Hotel to the Fashionable Beef.' Toinon," she added, "do ask these people to give us potage aux poireaux this evening, for I cannot and will not eat that black broth of false turtle any more."
CHAPTER VII
The craze for refugees cooled slightly in the neighbourhood after that. The first rush of enthusiastic generosity abated, and when friends met at knitting-parties and compared refugees there was a certain ægritude on the part of those who had them, and a certain smiling superiority on the part of those who had not. They were spoken of as if they were a disease, like measles or mumps.
"I hear that Lady Osmond has them," said Mrs. Mellon.
"Has she really?"
"Yes. And poor Mrs. Whitaker, too."
"Mrs. Whitaker? You don't say so."
"Yes, indeed. Mrs. Whitaker has them. And she feels it badly."
"I will run over to see her," said the sympathetic Mrs. Mulholland. "I am so fond of the dear soul."
But that very afternoon Mrs. Whitaker herself called on Mrs. Mulholland, at Park House.
"How do you do, my poor dear Theresa?" began Mrs. Mulholland, taking Mrs. Whitaker's hand and pressing it. "I hear–"
"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Whitaker rather fretfully, drawing her hand away. "Of course you have heard that I have them." There was a brief silence. "I must confess I did not expect quite such dreary ones."
"Dreary, are they?" exclaimed Mrs. Mulholland. "Is that all?"
"It's bad enough," sighed Mrs. Whitaker. "You have no idea what they are like. Three creatures that look as if they had stepped out of a nightmare."
But Mrs. Mulholland overflowed with her own grievances. "Do they borrow your clothes and use all your letter-paper and order your dinners?" asked Mrs. Mulholland, quivering with indignation. Her cook had just given notice on account of Madame Pitou going into the kitchen and making herself a timbale de riz aux champignons.
"No. They don't do that. But they sit about and never speak and look like ghosts," said Mrs. Whitaker. "When you have time you might drop in and see them."
"I think I'll run over with you now," said Mrs. Mulholland; "though I don't for a moment believe they can be as bad as mine."
She put on her garden-hat and her macintosh, told Kitty not to let the Pitous do any cooking in the drawing-room, and went out with Mrs. Whitaker. They took the short cut across the fields to Acacia Lodge.
"What language do they speak?" asked Mrs. Mulholland, as she proceeded with Mrs. Whitaker through the green garden-gate and down the drive.
"They never speak at all," replied Mrs. Whitaker; "and I must say I had looked forward to a little French conversation for Eva and Tom. That is really what I got them for."
They walked on under the chestnut-trees towards the house. Eva in trim tennis attire and George in khaki came to meet them, running across the lawn.
"I've beaten George by six four," cried Eva, waving her racket.
"That's because I let you," said her brother, shaking hands with Mrs. Mulholland and allowing his mother to pat his brown cheek.
"Handsome lad," murmured Mrs. Mulholland, and wished she had brought Kitty with her, even though the Pitous should profit by her absence to prepare their tête-de-veau en poulette on the drawing-room fire. "Where are … they?" she added, dropping her voice and looking round.
"I don't know," said Eva. "I have not seen them all the afternoon."
"I have," said George. "They are in the shrubbery."
"You might call them, dear boy," said his fond mother.
"Not I," said George.
"I will," said Eva, and ran down the flower-bordered path swinging her racket.
"Sweet girl," said Mrs. Mulholland, following Eva's slim silhouette with benevolent eyes, and then gazing even more benevolently at George Whitaker's stalwart figure. "She and my Kitty should really see something more of each other."
Mrs. Whitaker threw a penetrating glance at her friend's profile. "Schemer," she murmured to herself. "Certainly," she said aloud. "As soon as George goes to Aldershot I hope your dear daughter will often come here."
"Cat," reflected Mrs. Mulholland. And aloud she said, "How delightful for both the dear girls!"
George had sauntered with his long khaki limbs towards the shrubbery, but Eva reappeared alone.
"They won't come," she said.
"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Mulholland.
"Why not?" asked Mrs. Whitaker.
"They don't want to," said Eva. "The tall one shook her head and said, 'Merci.'"
"I am not surprised," laughed George, "considering they have been exhibited to half the county within the last three days."
"I'll fetch them myself," said Mrs. Whitaker sternly. Then she turned to her son. "George, you who are half a Frenchman after your visit to Montreux, do tell me—how do I say in French, 'I desire you all three to come and be introduced to a very dear friend of mine?'"
There was a brief silence; then George translated. "Venny," he said.
"Is that all?"
"Yes," said George.
His mother was about to go when Mrs. Mulholland suggested: "Had we not both of us better take a turn round the garden, and casually saunter into the shrubbery?"
"Perhaps so," said Mrs. Whitaker.
And so they did. George followed them slowly, with Eva hanging on his arm. She was very fond and proud of her soldier brother.
They entered the shrubbery and saw seated upon a bench three figures dressed in black, who rose to their feet at their hostess's approach.
"Goodness gracious! how uncanny they look!" whispered Mrs. Mulholland, and added, with a smile of half-incredulous pleasure, "I believe they really are worse than mine."
The three black figures stood silent and motionless, and Mrs. Mulholland found herself gazing as if fascinated into the depths of three pairs of startled, almost hallucinated eyes, fixed gloomily upon her.
Mrs. Whitaker addressed them in English, speaking very loud with an idea of making them understand her better. They seemed not to hear, they certainly made no attempt to answer her amiable platitudes.
Mrs. Mulholland, moved to something like pity by their stricken appearance, put out her hand saying, "How do you do?" and two of them laid their limp fingers in hers—the third, whom she now noticed was a child although she wore a long black skirt, neither stirred nor removed her stony gaze from her face. There was an embarrassing pause. Then Mrs. Mulholland asked with a bright society smile—
"How do you like England?"
No answer.
"George, dear, ask them in French," said his mother.
George stepped forward blushing through his tan. "Um … er …" he cleared his throat. "S'il vous plaît Londres?" he inquired timidly.
He addressed the tallest, but she gazed at him vacantly, not understanding. The little girl stood next to her—the large tragic eyes in her small pale face still fixed on the unknown countenance of Mrs. Mulholland. She conveyed the impression that she had not heard any one speak.
George, blushing deeper, turned towards the third ghost standing before him, coughed again and repeated his question, "S'il vous plaît Londres?"
Then a strange thing happened. The third ghost smiled. It was a real smile, a gleaming smile, a smile with dimples. The ghost was suddenly transformed into a girl. "Merci. L'Angleterre nous plaît beaucoup." That was in order not to hurt the "half Frenchman's" feelings. Then she added in English, "London is very nice."
"Oh," snapped the astonished Mrs. Whitaker, "you speak English?" and her tone conveyed the impression that something belonging exclusively to her had been taken and used without her permission.
"A little," was the murmured reply. The smile had quickly died away; the dimples had vanished. Under Mrs. Whitaker's scrutiny the girl faded into a ghost again. The two ladies nodded and moved away. George and Eva, after a moment's hesitation and embarrassment, followed them.
"What strange, underhand behaviour!" commented Mrs. Whitaker; "never to have told me she understood English until today."
"I suppose they were trying to find out all your family concerns," said Mrs. Mulholland.
A word that sounded like "Bosh" proceeded from George, who had turned his back and was walking into the house.
"I think they were just dazed," explained Eva. "They look almost as if they were walking in their sleep. I never even noticed until today that they were all so young. Why, the little one is a mere kiddy;" she twisted round on her heel. "I think I shall go back and talk to them," she added.
"No," said her mother. "You will stay here."
That evening when Mr. Whitaker came back from the City his daughter had much to tell him, and even the somewhat supercilious George took an interest and joined in the conversation.
"The ghosts have spoken, papa!" cried Eva, dancing round him in the hall. Then as soon as he was in the drawing-room she made him sit down in his armchair and kissed him on the top of his benevolent bald head. "And—do you know?—they are really not ghosts at all; are they, mother?"
Mrs. Whitaker did not look up from her knitting. But her husband spoke.
"They are the wife, the sister, and the daughter of a doctor," he said. "At the Belgian Consulate I was told they were quite decent people. My dear Theresa," he added, looking at his wife, "I think we ought to have asked them to take their meals with us."
"I did so," said Mrs. Whitaker, with some asperity. "I did so, although they do look like scarecrows. But they say they prefer having their meals by themselves."
"Then you must respect their wishes," said Mr. Whitaker, opening a commercial review.
"Just fancy, Pops," said Eva, perching herself on the arm of her father's chair, "the youngest one—the poor little creature with the uncanny eyes—is deaf and dumb."
"How sad!" said her father, caressing his daughter's soft hair.
"Did her mother tell you so?" asked Mrs. Whitaker, looking up from the grey scarf she was knitting.
"No, not her mother," explained Eva; "the other one told me. The one with the dimples, who speaks English. She is sweet!" cried the impulsive Eva, and her father patted her hair again and smiled.
"Her name is Sherry," remarked George.
"Oh, George, you silly," exclaimed Eva. "You mean Chérie."
"How do you know her name?" snapped Mrs. Whitaker, laying down her knitting in her lap and fixing stern inquisitorial eyes upon her son.
"She told me," said George, with a nonchalant air.
"She told you!" said his mother. "I never knew you had any conversation with those women."
"It wasn't conversation," said George. "I met her in the garden and I stopped her and said, 'What is your name?' and she answered, 'Sherry.' That's all."
"Queer name," said his father.
"My dear Anselm, that is really not the point—" began Mrs. Whitaker, but the dressing-gong sounded and they all promptly dispersed to their rooms, so Anselm never knew what the point really was.