them,
hardly letting them drink their coffee before she wanted to give them
more. But it was no good; she was and remained nervous, and her hand
shook so when she lifted it that she was ashamed.

Fraeulein Kuhraeuber was the one who stared least. If she caught Anna's
eye her own drooped, whereas the eyes of the other two never wavered.
She sat on the edge of her chair in a way made familiar to Anna by
intercourse with Frau Manske, and whatever anybody said she nodded her
head and murmured "_Ja, eben_." She was obviously ill at ease, and
dropped the sugar-tongs when she was offered sugar with a loud clatter
on to the varnished floor, nearly sweeping the cups off the table in her
effort to pick them up again.

"Oh, do not mind," said Anna, "Letty will pick them up. They are stupid
things--much too big for the sugar-basin."

"_Ja, eben_," said Fraeulein Kuhraeuber, sitting up and looking perturbed.
The other two removed their eyes from Anna's face for a moment to stare
at the Fraeulein. The baroness, a small, fair person with hair arranged
in those little flat curls called kiss-me-quicks on each cheek, and
wide-open pale blue eyes, and a little mouth with no lips, or lips so
thin that they were hardly visible, sat very still and straight, and had
a way of moving her eyes round from one face to the other without at the
same time moving her head. She was unmarried, and was probably about
thirty-five, Anna thought, but she had always evaded questions in the
correspondence about her age. Fraeulein Kuhraeuber was also thirty-five,
and as large and blooming as the baroness was small and pale. Frau von
Treumann was over fifty, and had had more sorrows, judging from her
letters, than the other two. She sat nearest Anna, who every now and
then laid her hand gently on hers and let it rest there a moment, in her
determination to thaw all frost from the very beginning. "Oh, I quite
forgot," she said cheerfully--the amount of cheerfulness she put into
her voice made her laugh at herself--"I quite forgot to introduce you to
each other."

"We did it at the station," said Frau von Treumann, "when we found
ourselves all entering your carriage."

"The Elmreichs are connected with the Treumanns," observed the baroness.

"We are such a large family," said Frau von Treumann quickly, "that we
are connected with nearly everybody."

The tone was cold, and there was a silence. Neither of them, apparently,
was connected with Fraeulein Kuhr