I could see that Lena was deeply impressed, and so were the two
others when she passed it on. Then she began to question me again.

"Are there many women in Canada--women in every house--like here?"

I told her there were not nearly so many women in Canada as here;
indeed, there were not enough to go around, and there were lots of
men who could not get married for that reason.

When Lena passed that on, excitement reigned, and German questions
were hurled at me! I think the three girls were ready to leave home!
I gently reminded them of the war and the complications it had caused
in the matter of travelling. They threw out their hands with a
gesture of despair--there could be no Canada for them. "Fertig," they
said--which is the word they use to mean "no chance," "no use to try
further."

Lena, however, having travelled as far as Sweden, and knowing,
therefore, something of the world's ways, was not altogether without
hope.

"The war--will be some day done!" she said--and we let it go at that.

Lena began to teach me German, and used current events as the basis
of instruction. Before the end of the first day I was handling
sentences like this--"Herr Schmidt expects to have his young child
christened in the church next Sunday at 2 o'clock, God willing."

Helene Romisch, the daughter of the house, had a mania for knowing
every one's age, and put the question to me in the first ten minutes
of our acquaintance. She had evidently remembered every answer she
had ever received to her questions, for she told me the age of every
one who passed by on the road, and when there was no one passing she
gave me a list of the family connections of those who had gone, or
those who were likely to go, with full details as to birthdays.

I think it was Eliza, the other girl, who could speak no English and
had to use Lena as interpreter, who first broached the tender subject
of matrimony.

Was I married?

I said, "No."

Then, after a few minutes' conference--

Had I a girl?

"No--I hadn't," I told them.

Then came a long and heated discussion, and Lena was hard put to it,
with her scanty store of English words, and my recently acquired
German, to frame such a delicate question. I thought I knew what it
was going to be--but I did not raise a hand to help.

Why hadn't I a girl? Did I not like girls? or what?

I said I did like girls; that was not the reason. Then all three
talked at once, and I knew a further explanation