evening paper from London half an hour before it
could reach the Close.

It was their good old Anna who consoled and sustained
the girl during those first days of strain and of
suspense. Anna was never tired of repeating in her
comfortable, cosy, easy-going way, that after all very
few soldiers _really_ get killed in battle. She, Anna,
had had a brother, and many of her relations, fighting
in 1870, and only one of them all had been killed.

The old woman kept her own personal feelings entirely
to herself -- and indeed those feelings were very
mixed. Of course she did not share the now universal
suspense, surprise, and grief, for to her mind it was
quite right and natural that the Germans should beat
the English. What would have been really most disturbing
and unnatural would have been if the English
had beaten the Germans!

But even so she was taken aback by the secret, fierce
exultation which Manfred Hegner -- she could not yet
bring herself to call him Alfred Head -- displayed,
when he and she were left for three or four minutes
alone by his wife, Polly.

Since that pleasant evening they had spent together --
it now seemed a long time ago, yet it was barely a
fortnight -- Anna had fallen into the way of going to
the Stores twice, and even three times, a week, to supper.
Her host flattered her greatly by pointing out that
the information she had given him concerning Major
Guthrie and the Expeditionary Force, as it was oddly
called, had been sound. Frankly he had exclaimed,
"As the days went on and nothing was known, I
thought you must have been mistaken, Frau Bauer.
But you did me a good turn, and one I shall not forget!

[[180]]

p179 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p180w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p181

v?