seem to be!"

But when Anna had returned to her kitchen the two ladies had gone on
silently and rather sadly with their breakfasts and their papers; and
after she had finished, Mrs. Otway, with a heavy heart, had walked
across the hall, to her pretty kitchen, to tell Anna the great and
tragic news.

The kitchen of the Trellis House was oddly situated just opposite Mrs.
Otway's sitting-room and at right angles to the dining-room. Thus the
two long Georgian windows of Anna's domain commanded the wide green of
the Cathedral Close, and the kitchen door was immediately on your right
as you walked through the front door into the arched hall of the house.

On this momentous morning Anna's mistress found the old German woman
sitting at her large wooden table writing a letter. When Mrs. Otway came
in, Anna looked up and smiled; but she did not rise, as an English
servant would have done.

Mrs. Otway walked across to her, and very kindly she laid her hand on
the older woman's shoulder.

"I have something sad to tell you," she said gently. "England, my poor
Anna, is at war! England has declared war on Germany! But I have come to
tell you, also, that the fact that our countries are at war will make no
difference to you and to me, Anna--will it?"

Anna had looked up, and for a moment she had seemed bewildered, stunned
by the news. Then all the colour had receded from her round face; it
became discomposed, covered with red streaks. She broke into convulsive
sobs as, shaking her head violently, she exclaimed, "Nein! Nein!"

If only poor old Anna had left it there! But she had gone on, amid her
sobs, to speak wildly, disconnectedly, and yes--yes, rather arrogantly
too, of the old war with France in 1870--of her father, and of her
long-dead brother; how both of them had fought, how gloriously they had
conquered!

Mrs. Otway had begun by listening in silence to this uncalled-for
outburst. But at last, with a touch of impatience, she broke across
these ill-timed reminiscences with the words, "But now, Anna? _Now_
there is surely no one belonging to your family likely to fight? No one,
I mean, likely to fight against England?"

The old woman stared at her stupidly, as if scarcely understanding the
sense of what was being said to her; and Mrs. Otway, with a touch of
decision in her voice, had gone on--"How fortunate it is that your
Louisa married an Englishman!"

But on that Anna had again shaken her head violently. "No, no!" s