There was a great silence while I was given a cup of coffee and some
cake by Frau Bornsted, helped by her sister. The young man, the third
in our trio of youth, sat motionless in the chair next to me while this
was done. I wanted to fetch my cup myself, rather than let Frau
Bornsted wait on me, but she pressed me down into my chair again with
firmness and the pained look of one who is witnessing the committing of
a solecism. "_Bitte_--take place again," she said, her English giving
way in the stress of getting me to behave as I should.

The women looked on with open interest and curiosity, examining my
clothes and hair and hands and the Bibles I was clutching and the
flowers I had stuck in where the Psalms are, because I never can find
the Psalms right off. The men looked too, but with caution. I was
fearfully untidy. You would have been shocked. But I don't know how
one is to lie about on moss all day and stay neat, and nobody told me I
was going to tumble into the middle of a party.

The first to disentangle himself from the rest and come and speak to me
was Frau Bornsted's father, Pastor Wienicke. He came and stood in
front of me, his legs apart and a cigar in his mouth, and he took the
cigar out to tell me, what I already knew, that I was English. "_Sie
sind englisch_," said Herr Pastor Wienicke.

"Ja," said I, as modestly as I could, which wasn't very.

There was something about the party that made me sit up on the edge of
my chair with my feet neatly side by side, and hold my cup as carefully
as if I had been at a school treat and expecting the rector every
minute. "England," said the pastor, while everybody else listened,--he
spoke in German--"is, I think I may say, still a great country."

"_Ja_?" said I politely, tilting up the _ja_ a little at its end, which
was meant to suggest not only a deferential, "If you say so it must be
so" attitude, but also a courteous doubt as to whether any country
could properly be called great in a world in which the standard of
greatness was set by so splendid an example of it as his own country.

And it did suggest this, for he said, "_Oh doch_," balancing himself on
his heels and toes alternately, as though balancing himself into exact
justice. "_Oh doch._ I think one may honestly say she still is a
great country, But--" and he raised his voice and his forefinger at
me,--"let her beware of her money bags. That is my word to England:
Beware of thy money ba