ow close those big horses and guns turn the
corners--then one's foot slips and one gets run over. That's how it
happens. Several times it had happened, but not many times; certainly
not a hundred, perhaps not twenty. So, you see, you _must_ be all. Tell
me now that you are all that there are, and Anna shall give you
the cakes.'

'Thousands,' a boy repeated monotonously. 'Then we all come here to
wait till our people come for us.'

'But now we will go away from here. The poor lady is tired,' said the
elder girl, plucking his sleeve.

'Oh, you hurt, you hurt!' he cried, and burst into tears.

'What is that for?' said Frau Ebermann. 'To cry in a room where a poor
lady is sick is very inconsiderate.'

'Oh, but look, lady!' said the elder girl.

Frau Ebermann looked and saw.

'_Au revoir_, lady.' They made their little smiling bows and curtseys
undisturbed by her loud cries. '_Au revoir,_ lady. We will wait till our
people come for us.'

When Anna at last ran in, she found her mistress on her knees, busily
cleaning the floor with the lace cover from the radiator, because, she
explained, it was all spotted with the blood of five children--she was
perfectly certain there could not be more than five in the whole
world--who had gone away for the moment, but were now waiting round the
corner, and Anna was to find them and give them cakes to stop the
bleeding, while her mistress swept and garnished that Our dear Lord when
He came might find everything as it should be.

Mary Postgate

(1915)

Of Miss Mary Postgate, Lady McCausland wrote that she was 'thoroughly
conscientious, tidy, companionable, and ladylike. I am very sorry to
part with her, and shall always be interested in her welfare.'

Miss Fowler engaged her on this recommendation, and to her surprise, for
she had had experience of companions, found that it was true. Miss
Fowler was nearer sixty than fifty at the time, but though she needed
care she did not exhaust her attendant's vitality. On the contrary, she
gave out, stimulatingly and with reminiscences. Her father had been a
minor Court official in the days when the Great Exhibition of 1851 had
just set its seal on Civilisation made perfect. Some of Miss Fowler's
tales, none the less, were not always for the young. Mary was not young,
and though her speech was as colourless as her eyes or her hair, she was
never shocked. She listened unflinchingly to every one; said at the end,
'How interesting!' or