with France against Germany, could affect her own
position or condition in England would have seemed
to her absurd.

Germany and England? A contrast indeed! In
Germany her son-in-law, that idle scamp George
Pollit, would by now be marching on his way to
the French or Russian frontier. But George, being
English, was quite safe -- unfortunately. The only
difference the war would make to him would be that
it would provide him with an excuse for trying to
get at some of Anna's carefully-hoarded savings.

If good old Anna had a fault -- and curiously enough
it was one of which her mistress was quite unaware,
though Rose had sometimes uncomfortably suspected
the fact -- it was a love of money.

Anna, in spite of her low wages, had saved far
more than an English servant earning twice as much
would have done. Her low wage? Yes, still low,
though she had been raised four pounds a year when
her mistress had come into a better income. Before
then Anna had been content with sixteen pounds a
year. She now received twenty pounds, but she was
ruefully aware that she was worth half as much again.
In fact thirty pounds a year had actually been offered
to her, in a roundabout way, by a lady who had
come as a visitor to a house in the Close. But the
lady, like Anna herself, was a German; and, apart
altogether from every other consideration, including
Anna's passionate love of Miss Rose, nothing would
have made her take service with a mistress of her own
nationality.

"This Mrs. Hirsch me to save her money wants.
Her kind I know," she observed to the emissary who

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v?