mixture!"

"But, Millie, best child, it's just the very thing that makes you know
you're here."

"It doesn't me, Gertrude."

"What is English towns looking like," said Elsa Speier.

No one seemed ready to take up this challenge.

"Like other towns I suppose," laughed Jimmie.

"Our Millie is glad to be in Germany," ruled Fraulein, rising. "She and
I agree--I go most gladly to England. Gairtrud is neither English nor
German. Perhaps she looks down upon us all."

"Of course I do," roared Gertrude, crossing her knees and tilting her
chair. "What do you think? Was denkt ihr? I am a barbarian."

"A stranger."

"Still we of the wild are the better men."

"Ah. We end then with a quotation from our dear Schiller. Come,
children."

"What's that from?" Miriam asked of Gertrude as they wandered up the
garden.

"'The Rauber.' Magnificent thing. Play. We saw it last winter."

"I don't believe she really cares for it a bit," was Miriam's mental
comment. Her heart was warm towards Millie, looking so outlandish with
her English vicarage air in this little German beer-garden, with her
strange love of Germany. Of course there wasn't anything a bit like
Germany in England.... So silly to make comparisons. "Comparisons are
odious." Perfectly true.

16

They made their way back to the street through a long low roomful of men
drinking at little tables. Heavy clouds of smoke hung and moved in the
air and mingled with the steady odour of German food, braten, onion and
butter-sodden, beer and rich sour bread. A tinkling melody supported by
rhythmic time-marking bass notes that seemed to thump the wooden floor
came from a large glass-framed musical box. The dark rafters ran low,
just above them. Faces glanced towards them as they all filed avertedly
through the room. There were two or three guttural greetings--"N'
Morgen, Meine Damen...." A large limber woman met them in the front room
with their bill and stood talking to Fraulein as the girls straggled
out into the sunshine. She was wearing a neat short-skirted
crimson-and-brown check dress and a large blue apron and her haggard
face was lit with radiantly kind strong dark eyes. Miriam envied her.
She would like to pour out beer for those simple men and dispense their
food... quietly and busily.... No need to speak to them, or be clever.
They would like her care and would understand. "Meine Damen" hurt
her. She was not Dame--Was Fraulein? Elsa? Millie was. Millie would