y masculine point of view. The women to be
benefited--why he thought of them as old is not clear, for you need not
be old to be unhappy--would have protested, probably, with indignant
cries that individually they were well worth Miss Estcourt, in any case
were every bit as good as she was, and collectively--oh, absurd.

He thought of his sister Trudi. Perhaps she knew of some one who would
be both kind and clever, and protect Miss Estcourt in some measure from
the twelve. Trudi's friends, it is true, were not the sort among whom
staid companions are found. Their husbands were chiefly lieutenants, and
they spent their time at races. They lived in flats in Hanover, where
the regiment was quartered, and flats are easy to manage, and none of
these young women would endure, he supposed, to have an elderly
companion always hanging round. Still, there was a remote possibility
that some one of them might be able to recommend a suitable person. If
Trudi were staying with him now she would be a great help; not so much
because of what she would do, but because he could go with her to
Kleinwalde, and Miss Estcourt could come to his house when she wanted
anything, and need not depend solely on the parson. It was his duty,
considering old Joachim's unchanging kindness towards him, and the pains
the old man had taken to help him in the management of his estate, and
to encourage him at a time when he greatly needed help and
encouragement, to do all that lay in his power for old Joachim's niece.
When he heard that she was coming he had decided that this was his plain
duty: that she was so pretty, so adorably pretty and simple and friendly
only made it an unusually pleasant one. "I will write to Trudi," he
thought, "and ask her to come over for a week or two."

He sat down at his writing-table in the big window overlooking the
farmyard, and began the letter. But he felt that it would be absurd to
ask her to come on Miss Estcourt's account. Why should she do anything
for Miss Estcourt, and why should he want his sister to do anything for
her? That would be the first thing that would strike the astute Trudi.
So he merely wrote reminding her that she had not stayed with him since
the previous summer, and suggested that she should come for a few days
with her children, now that the spring was coming and the snow had gone.
"The woods will soon be blue with anemones," he wrote, though he well
knew that Trudi's attitude towards anemones was col