A little Englishwoman, married to a German, had dwelt with him eighteen
years in humble happiness and the district of Putney, where her husband
worked in the finer kinds of leather. He was a harmless, busy little man
with the gift for turning his hand to anything which is bred into the
peasants of the Black Forest, who on their upland farms make all the
necessaries of daily life--their coarse linen from home-grown flax,
their leather gear from the hides of their beasts, their clothes from
the wool thereof, their furniture from the pine logs of the Forest,
their bread from home-grown flour milled in simple fashion and baked in
the home-made ovens, their cheese from the milk of their own goats. Why
he had come to England he probably did not remember--it was so long ago;
but he would still know why he had married Dora, the daughter of the
Putney carpenter, she being, as it were, salt of the earth: one of those
Cockney women, deeply sensitive beneath a well-nigh impermeable mask of
humour and philosophy, who quite unselfconsciously are always doing
things for others. In their little grey Putney house they had dwelt
those eighteen years, without perhaps ever having had time to move,
though they had often had the intention of doing so for the sake of the
children, of whom they had three, a boy and two girls. Mrs.
Gerhardt--she shall be called, for her husband had a very German name,
and there is more in a name than Shakespeare dreamed of--Mrs. Gerhardt
was a little woman with large hazel eyes and dark crinkled hair in which
there were already a few threads of grey when the war broke out. Her boy
David, the eldest, was fourteen at that date, and her girls, Minnie and
Violet, were eight and five, rather pretty children, especially the
little one. Gerhardt, perhaps because he was so handy, had never risen.
His firm regarded him as indispensable and paid him fair wages, but he
had no "push," having the craftsman's temperament, and employing his
spare time in little neat jobs for his house and his neighbours, which
brought him no return. They made their way, therefore, without that
provision for the future which necessitates the employment of one's time
for one's own ends. But they were happy, and had no enemies; and each
year saw some mild improvements in their studiously clean house and tiny
back garden. Mrs. Gerhardt, who was cook, seamstress, washerwoman,
besides being wife and mother, was almost notorious in that street of
semi