Of all the injunctions people are apt to give one
another, perhaps the most cruel and the most futile
is that of not to worry. Mrs. Otway had really meant
to be kind, but her message gave Anna Bauer a most
unhappy day. The old German woman had long ago
made up her mind that when it suited herself she
would leave the Trellis House, but never, never had
it occurred to her that anything could happen which
might compel her to do so.

At last, when evening fell, she felt she could no
longer bear her loneliness and depression. Also she
longed to tell her surprising news to sympathetic ears.

All through that long day Anna Bauer had been
making up her mind to go back to Germany. She
knew that there would be no difficulty about it, for
something Mrs. Otway had told her a few weeks ago
showed that many German women were going home,
helped thereto by the British Government. As for
Willi and Minna, however bitterly they might feel
towards England, they would certainly welcome her
when they realised how much money, all her savings,
she was bringing with her.

As she walked quickly along -- getting very puffy,
for she was stout and short of breath -- it seemed to
her as if the kindly old city, where she had lived in
happiness and amity for so many years, had changed
in character. She felt as if the windows of the houses
were frowning down at her, and as if cruel pitfalls
yawned in her way.

Her depression was increased by her first sight of
the building for which she was bound, for, as she
walked across the Market Place, she saw the boarded
up shop-front of the Stores. "Mr. Head hoped to

[[293]]

p292 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p293w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p294

v?