or three, perhaps, would have liked to be disagreeable,
but they did not dare."

He hurried away, for his guests were arriving thick
and fast.

It was a strange and, or so Mrs. Otway would have
thought, a rather pathetic little company of men and
women, who gathered together at Manfred Hegner's
Stores at nine o'clock on that fine August night. The
blinds had been drawn down, and behind the blinds
the shutters had been put up.

As to the people there, they all looked prosperous
and respectable, but each one wore a slight air of
apprehension and discomfort. Strange to say, not
one of the Germans present really liked or trusted
their host, and that was odd, for Manfred Hegner,
apart from certain outstanding exceptions, had managed
to make himself quite popular among the English
inhabitants of Witanbury.

The men and the women had instinctively parted
into two companies, but Mrs. Hegner went to and
fro among both sets, pressing hospitably on all her
guests the coffee, the creamy milk, and the many
cakes, to say nothing of the large sandwiches she had
been ordered to make that afternoon.

She felt oppressed and rather bewildered, for the
people about her were all talking German, and she
had never taken the trouble to learn even half a
dozen words of her husband's difficult nasal language.
She kept wondering when the meeting would begin.
Time was going on. They always got up very early
in the morning, and already she was tired, very, very

[[70]]

p069 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p070w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p071

v?