, so Anna firmly believed, had no army to speak of--no _real_
army. She remembered the day when France had declared war on Germany in
1870. How at once every street of the little town in which she had lived
had become full of soldiers--splendid, lion-hearted soldiers going off
to fight for their beloved Fatherland. Nothing of the sort had taken
place here, though Witanbury was a garrison town. The usual tradesmen,
strong, lusty young men, had called for orders that morning. They had
laughed and joked as usual. Not one of them seemed aware his country was
at war. The old German woman's lip curled disdainfully.

For the British, as a people, Anna Bauer cherished a tolerant affection
and kindly contempt. It was true that, all unknowing to herself, she
also had a great belief in British generosity and British justice. The
idea that this war, or rather the joining in of England 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 had been