he orchestra.

"Hi sye," the landlady confided to the slavey, M'riar, "that Dutch
toff in the hattic, 'e's somethink in disguise!"

"My hye," exclaimed the slavey, who adored Herr Kreutzer and intensely
worshiped Anna. She jumped back dramatically. "_Not bombs!_"

The neighborhood was used to linking thoughts of bombs with thoughts
of foreigners whose hair hung low upon their shoulders as, beyond a
doubt, Herr Kreutzer's did, so M'riar's guess was not absurd. England
offers refuge to the nightmares of all Europe's political indigestion.
Soho offers most of them their lodgings. For years M'riar had been
vainly waiting, with delicious fear, for that terrific moment when she
should discover a loaded bit of gas-pipe in some bed as she yanked off
the covers. Now real drama seemed, at last, to be coming into her dull
life. Somethink in disguise--Miss Anna's father! She hoped it was
_not_ bombs, for bombs _might_ mean trouble for him. She resolved that
should she see a bobby trying to get up into the attic she would pour
a kettleful of boiling water on him.

The landlady relieved her, somewhat, by her comment of next moment.
"'E's too mild fer bombs by 'arf," she said, with rich disgust.
"Likelier 'e's drove away, than that 'e's one as wishes 'e could
drive. _Hi_ sye, fer guess, that 'e's got titles, an' sech like, but's
bean cashiered." (The landlady had had a son disgraced as officer of
yeomanry and used a military term which, to her mind, meant exiled.)
"'E's got that look abaht 'im of 'avin' bean fired hout."

"No fault o' 'is, then," said the slavey quickly, voicing her earnest
partisanship without a moment's wait. She even looked at her employer
with a belligerent eye.

"'E _doos_ pye reg'lar," the landlady admitted with an air which
showed that she had more than once had tenants who did not.

"Judgin' from 'is manners an' kind 'eart 'e _might_ be _princes_,"
said the slavey, drawing in her breath exactly as she would if
sucking a ripe orange.

"An' 'is darter might be princesses!" exclaimed the landlady with a
sniff. Quite plainly she did not approve of the seclusion in which
Herr Kreutzer kept his daughter. "Five years 'ave them two lived 'ere
in this 'ere 'ouse, an' not five times 'as that there man let that
there 'aughty miss stir hout halone!"

"'Ow 'eavingly!" sighed the maid, who never, in her life, had been
cared for, at all, by anyone.

"'Ow fiddlesticks!" the landlady replied. "You'd think she might