side against the swaying
of her dance. She was smiling her down-glancing, little sprite smile.
Miriam loved her....

A great plaque of sunlight lay across the breakfast-table. Miriam was
too happy to trouble about her imminent trial. She reflected that it was
quite possible to-day and to-morrow would be free. None of the
visiting masters came, except, sometimes, Herr Bossenberger for
music-lessons--that much she had learned from Mademoiselle. And, after
all, the class she had so dreaded had dwindled to just these four girls,
little Emma and the three grown-up girls. They probably knew all the
rules and beginnings. It would be just reading and so on. It would not
be so terrible--four sensible girls; and besides they had accepted her.
It did not seem anything extraordinary to them that she should teach
them; and they did not dislike her. Of that she felt sure. She could not
say this for even one of the English girls. But the German girls did not
dislike her. She felt at ease sitting amongst them and was glad she was
there and not at the English end of the table. Down here, hemmed in by
the Bergmanns with Emma's little form, her sounds, movements and warmth,
her little quiet friendliness planted between herself and the English,
with the apparently unobservant Minna and Elsa across the way she felt
safe. She felt fairly sure those German eyes did not criticise her.
Perhaps, she suggested to herself, they thought a good deal of English
people in general; and then they were in the minority, only four of
them; it was evidently a school for English girls as much as anything...
strange--what an adventure for all those English girls--to be just
boarders--Miriam wondered how she would feel sitting there as an English
boarder among the Martins and Gertrude, Millie, Jimmie and Judy? It
would mean being friendly with them. Finally she ensconced herself
amongst her Germans, feeling additionally secure.... Fraulein had spent
many years in England. Perhaps that explained the breakfast of oatmeal
porridge--piled plates of thick stirabout thickly sprinkled with pale,
very sweet powdery brown sugar--and the eggs to follow with rolls and
butter.

Miriam wondered how Fraulein felt towards the English girls.

She wondered whether Fraulein liked the English girls best.... She paid
no attention to the little spurts of conversation that came at intervals
as the table grew more and more dismantled. She was there, safely
there--what a perfectly