effect upon her mother's perpetual ill-health, upon Eve's
nerves and Sarah's mysterious indigestion was so impermanent that the
very sound of his name exasperated her, had something about him that she
failed entirely to find in this German--something she could respect. She
wondered whether the professional classes in Germany were all like this
specialist and living in this way. Minna's parents she knew were paying
large fees.

10

These dreaded expeditions brought a compensation.

Her liking for Minna grew with each visit. She wondered at her. Here
she was with her nose and her ear--she was subject to rheumatism too--it
would always, Miriam reflected, be doctor's treatment for her. She
wondered at her perpetual cheerfulness. She saw her with a pang of pity,
going through life with her illnesses, capped in defiance of all the
care she bestowed on her person, with her disconcerting nose, a nose she
reflected, that would do splendidly for charades.

11

On several occasions a little contingent selected from the pianos and
kitchen had appeared in the schoolroom and settled down to read German
with Fraulein. Miriam had been despatched to a piano. After these
readings the mid-morning lunching-plates of sweet custard-like soup or
chocolate soup or perhaps glasses of sweet syrup and biscuits--were, if
Fraulein were safely out of earshot, voluble indignation meetings. If
she were known to be in the room beyond the little schoolroom, lunch was
taken in silence except for Gertrude's sallies, cheerful generalisations
from Minna or Jimmie, and grudging murmurs of response.

On the mornings of Fraulein's German readings the school never went to
Kreipe's. Going to Kreipe's Miriam perceived was a sign of fair weather.

They had been twice since her coming. Sitting at a little marble-topped
table with the Bergmanns near the window and overlooking the full flood
of the Georgstrasse Miriam felt a keen renewal of the sense of being
abroad. Here she sat, in the little enclosure of this upper room above
a shopful of strange Delikatessen, securely adrift. Behind her she felt,
not home but the German school where she belonged. Here they all
sat, free. Germany was all around them. They were in the midst of it.
Fraulein Pfaff seemed far away.... How strange of her to send them
there.... She glanced towards the two tables of English girls in the
centre of the room wondering whether they felt as she did.... They had
come to Ger