reated behind their curtains until the so terribly unsettled Twinkler
should be quiet again, and when once more they drew them a crack apart
in order to keep an eye on what the other one might be going to do next
and saw her doing nothing except, with meekness, getting dressed, they
merely inquired what part of Westphalia she came from, and only in the
tone they asked it did they convey that whatever part it was, it was
anyhow a contemptible one.

"We don't come from Westphalia," said Anna-Rose, bristling a little, in
spite of herself, at their persistent baiting.

Anna-Felicitas listened in cold anxiousness. She didn't want to have to
be sick again. She doubted whether she could bear it.

"You must come from somewhere," said the lower berth, "and being a
Twinkler it must be Westphalia."

"We don't really," said Anna-Rose, mindful of Anna-Felicitas's words
and making a great effort to speak politely. "We come from England."

"England!" cried the lower berth, annoyed by this quibbling. "You were
born in Westphalia. All Twinklers are born in Westphalia."

"Invariably they are," said the upper berth. "The only circumstance that
stops them is if their mothers happen to be temporarily absent."

"But we weren't, really," said Anna-Rose, continuing her efforts to
remain bland.

"Are you pretending--pretending to _us_," said the lower berth lady,
again beating her hand on the edge of her bunk, "that you are not
German?"

"Our father was German," said Anna-Rose, driven into a corner, "but I
don't suppose he is now. I shouldn't think he'd want to go on being one
directly he got to a really neutral place."

"Has he fled his country?" inquired the lower berth sternly, scenting
what she had from the first suspected, something sinister in the
Twinkler background.

"I suppose one might call it that," said Anna-Rose after a pause of
consideration, tying her shoe-laces.

"Do you mean to say," said the ladies with one voice, feeling themselves
now on the very edge of a scandal, "he was forced to fly from
Westphalia?"

"I suppose one might put it that way," said Anna-Rose, again
considering.

She took her cap off its hook and adjusted it over her hair with a
deliberation intended to assure Anna-Felicitas that she was remaining
calm. "Except that it wasn't from Westphalia he flew, but Prussia," she
said.

"Prussia?" cried the ladies as one woman, again rising themselves on
their elbows.

"That's where our father lived