ad asked her--spent this money when, as had happened
more than once during the last few weeks, she had been disagreeably
short.

And then she went out, walking very quietly through the hall. She did
not feel as if she wanted old Anna to know that she had heard from
Germany. It would be hard enough to have to tell Rose the dreadful thing
which, bringing such anguish to herself, could only give the girl,
absorbed in her own painful ordeal, a passing pang of sympathy and
regret.

* * * * *

Poor old Anna! Mrs. Otway was well aware that as the days went on Anna
became less and less pleasant to live with.

Not for the first time of late, she wondered uneasily if Miss Forsyth
had been right, on that August day which now seemed so very long ago.
Would it not have been better, even from Anna's point of view, to have
sent her back to her own country, to Berlin, to that young couple who
seemed to have so high an opinion of her, and with whom she had spent so
successful a holiday three years ago? At the time it had seemed
unthinkable, a preposterous notion, but now--Mrs. Otway sighed--now it
was only too clear that old Anna was not happy, and that she bitterly
resented the very slight changes the War had made in her own position.

Anna was even more discontented and unhappy than her mistress knew.
True, both Mrs. Otway and Rose had given her their usual Christmas
gifts, and one of these gifts had been far more costly than ever before.
But there had been no heart for the pretty Tree which, as long as Rose
could remember anything, had been the outstanding feature of each
twenty-fifth of December in her young life.

Yes, it had indeed been a dull and dreary Christmas for Anna! Last year
she had received a number of delightful presents from Berlin. These had
included a marzipan sausage, a marzipan turnip, and a wonderful toy
Zeppelin made of sausage--a real sausage fitted with a real screw, a
rudder, and at each end a flag.

But this autumn, as the weeks had gone by without bringing any answer to
her affectionate letters, she had told herself that Minna, or if not
Minna then Willi, would surely write for Christmas. And most bitterly
disappointed had Anna felt when the Christmas week went by bringing no
letter.

In vain Mrs. Otway told her that perhaps Willi and Minna felt, as so
many Germans were said to do, such hatred of England that they did not
care even to send a letter to someone living t