n one would have supposed possible if one had overheard what
he said to Aunt Alice in the seclusion of their bed. His ordered
existence, shaken enough by the war, Heaven knew, was shaken in its
innermost parts, in its very marrow, by the arrival of the two Germans.
Other people round about had Belgians in their homes, and groaned; but
who but he, the most immensely British of anybody, had Germans? And he
couldn't groan, because they were, besides being motherless creatures,
his own wife's flesh and blood. Not openly at least could he groan; but
he could and did do it in bed. Why on earth that silly mother of theirs
couldn't have stayed quietly on her Pomeranian sand-heap where she
belonged, instead of coming gallivanting over to England, and then when
she had got there not even decently staying alive and seeing to her
children herself, he at frequent intervals told Aunt Alice in bed that
he would like to know.

Aunt Alice, who after twenty years of life with Uncle Arthur was both
silent and sleek (for he fed her well), sighed and said nothing. She
herself was quietly going through very much on behalf of her nieces.
Jessup didn't like handing dishes to Germans. The tradespeople twitted
the cook with having to cook for them and were facetious about sausages
and asked how one made sauerkraut. Her acquaintances told her they were
very sorry for her, and said they supposed she knew what she was doing
and that it was all right about spies, but really one heard such strange
things, one never could possibly tell even with children; and regularly
the local policeman bicycled over to see if the aliens, who were
registered at the county-town police-station, were still safe. And then
they looked so very German, Aunt Alice felt. There was no mistaking
them. And every time they opened their mouths there were all those r's
rolling about. She hardly liked callers to find her nieces in her
drawing-room at tea-time, they were so difficult to explain; yet they
were too old to shut up in a nursery.

After three months of them, Uncle Arthur suggested sending them back to
Germany; but their consternation had been so great and their entreaties
to be kept where they were so desperate that he said no more about that.
Besides, they told him that if they went back there they would be sure
to be shot as spies, for over there nobody would believe they were
German, just as over here nobody would believe they were English; and
besides, this was in t