Gilligan!" says Ma, and I could see she was scared that if
Frits went Anna would certainly go, too. "Why Mary Gilligan, I thought
you was fond of dumb animals!" she says.

"And so I am," I says. "The dumber the better. But this one is evidently
far from it! How am I going to figure out my income tax with this bird
hanging around?"

"Hang in den Kitchen!" says Anna firmly, and at that we gave in, because
cooks is cooks, and what's a bird more or less after all? Still I didn't
like him on account of suspecting he wasn't a neutral any more than
Anna was for all she claimed to be a Swede. I had read a piece in the
paper about where the Germans was pretending to be Swede or Spanish or
anything they could get away with so's to remain free to spread
Bolshevism and influenza and bombs and send up the price of dry and
fancy goods and put through the Prohibition amendment and all them other
gentle little activities for which they are so well and justly known.

But I thought knowledge is power as the guy which wrote the copy-book
says, and I had the drop on Anna through being on to her disguise and
beside which I could see Ma was going to be miserable if she had to eat
out while her hand was in the sling, and so we took the viper to our
bosom, or in other words, we hired her, and anyways, she had already
accepted the job and it would of been a lot of trouble to get her out by
force. Which, believe you me, a person seldom has to do with servants
now-a-days, and confirmed me about her being German because naturally
people don't hire them, if acknowledging to themselves that they _are_
Germans any more than they would now deliberately import sauerkraut or
any other German industry. Do you get me? You'd better!

But in this case there was a reasonable doubt together with a real
necessity, although from what come of it, I feel, looking backwards, it
would of been better to eat out and suffer than to of compromised with
our patriotic consciences like we done at that time. Because there is
_no_ reasonable doubt but that Anna's coming into the house was greatly
responsible for Ma's catching Bolshevism.

II

NOT that she caught it off Anna directly, because for once we had a cook
which couldn't talk or understand American and so there was no use in
Ma's hanging around the kitchen worrying the life out of her. And so the
very first morning Anna was on the premises, Ma commenced hanging around
and worrying the life out of me.

It h