tching one of the
letters off the table, she began reading aloud: "My dear Mum, I hope
that this finds you as well as it does me. We are giving it to the
Allemans, as they call them out here, right in the neck." She waved the
sheet she was reading and exclaimed, "And then comes four lines so
scrubbed about that even the Old Gentleman himself couldn't read them!
Still, it's for that Alfred here is willing to pay----"

Her husband interrupted her furiously: "Put that down at once! D'you
hear, Polly? I'm the best judge of what a thing's worth to me in my
business. If I give Mrs. Tippins seven-and-sixpence for her letters,
they're worth seven-and-sixpence to me and a bit over. See? I shouldn't
'a thought it was necessary to tell _you_ that!"

He turned to Anna, and said rapidly in German: "The man who wrote these
letters is a sergeant. He's a very intelligent fellow. As you see, he
writes quite long letters, and there are a lot of little things that I
find it well worth my while to make a note of. In fact, as I told you
before, Frau Bauer, I am willing to pay for the sight of any good long
letter from the British Front. I should much like to see some from
officers, and I prefer those that are censored--I mean blacked out like
these. The military censors so far are simple folk." He laughed, and
Anna laughed too, without quite knowing why. "I should have expected
that Major whose mother died just after the war broke out, to be writing
to your ladies. Has he not done so yet?"

"The news has just come this very day, that he is a prisoner; but they
do not yet know where he is imprisoned," said Anna eagerly.

"That is good news," observed her host genially. "In spite of all my
efforts, I could never obtain that dratted Major's custom. But do not
any of the younger officers write to your young lady, in that strange
English way?" and he fixed his prominent eyes on her face, as if he
would fain look Anna through and through. "I had hoped that we should be
able to do so much business together," he said.

"I have told you of the postcards----" She spoke in an embarrassed tone.

"Ach! Yes. And I did pay you a trifle for a sight of them. But that was
really politeness, for, as you know, there was nothing in the postcards
of the slightest use to me."

Anna remained silent. She was of course well aware that her young lady
often received letters, short, censored letters, from Mr. Jervis Blake.
But Rose kept them in some secret place