had been sent to sound her. "You can say that Anna
Bauer a good mistress has, and knows when she well
suited is."

She had said nothing of the matter to Mrs. Otway,
but even so she sometimes thought of that offer, and
she often felt a little sore when she reflected on the
wages some of the easy-going servants who formed
part of the larger households in the Close received
from their employers.

Yet, in this all-important matter of money a stroke
of extraordinary good luck had befallen Anna -- one
of those things that very seldom come to pass in our
work-a-day world. It had happened, or perhaps it
would be truer to say it had begun -- for, unlike most
pieces of good fortune, it was continuous -- just three
years ago, in the autumn of 1911, shortly after her
return from that glorious holiday at Berlin. This
secret stroke of luck, for she kept it jealously to herself,
though there was nothing about it at all to her
discredit, had now lasted for over thirty months, and
it had had the agreeable effect of greatly increasing
her powers of saving. Of saving, that is, against the
day when she would go back to Germany, and live
with her niece.

Mrs. Otway would have been surprised indeed had
she known that Anna not only meant to leave the
Trellis House, but that, in a quiet, reflective kind of
way, she actually looked forward to doing so. Miss
Rose would surely marry, for a good many pleasant-mannered
gentlemen came and went to the Trellis
House (though none of them were as rich as Anna
would have liked one of them to be), and she herself
would get past her work. When that had come to

[[31]]

p030 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p031w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p032

v?