Christopher and Columbus | Page 7

might be, that she was doing at least a Christian thing? But
this illumination would soon die out. Her comforts choked it. She was
too well-fed. After twenty years of it, she no longer had the figure for
lean and dangerous enterprises.
And having definitely chosen Arthur, she concentrated what she had of
determination in finding an employment for her nieces that would
remove them beyond the range of his growing wrath. She found it in a
children's hospital as far away as Worcestershire, a hospital subscribed
to very largely by Arthur, for being a good man he subscribed to
hospitals. The matron objected, but Aunt Alice overrode the matron;
and from January to April Uncle Arthur's house was pure from
Germans.
Then they came back again.
It had been impossible to keep them. The nurses wouldn't work with
them. The sick children had relapses when they discovered who it was
who brought them their food, and cried for their mothers. It had been
arranged between Aunt Alice and the matron that the unfortunate
nationality of her nieces should not be mentioned. They were just to be
Aunt Alice's nieces, the Miss Twinklers,--("We will leave out the von,"
said Aunt Alice, full of unnatural cunning. "They have a von, you know,
poor things--such a very labelling thing to have. But Twinkler without
it might quite well be English. Who can possibly tell? It isn't as though
they had had some shocking name like Bismarck.")
Nothing, however, availed against the damning evidence of the rolled
r's. Combined with the silvery fair hair and the determined little mouths
and chins, it was irresistible. Clearly they were foreigners, and equally
clearly they were not Italians, or Russians, or French. Within a week
the nurses spoke of them in private as Fritz and Franz. Within a
fortnight a deputation of staff sisters went to the matron and asked, on
patriotic grounds, for the removal of the Misses Twinkler. The matron,
with the fear of Uncle Arthur in her heart, for he was altogether the
biggest subscriber, sharply sent the deputation about its business; and
being a matron of great competence and courage she would probably
have continued to be able to force the new probationers upon the nurses

if it had not been for the inability, which was conspicuous, of the
younger Miss Twinkler to acquire efficiency.
In vain did Anna-Rose try to make up for Anna-Felicitas's
shortcomings by a double zeal, a double willingness and cheerfulness.
Anna-Felicitas was a born dreamer, a born bungler with her hands and
feet. She not only never from first to last succeeded in filling the thirty
hot-water bottles, which were her care, in thirty minutes, which was her
duty, but every time she met a pail standing about she knocked against
it and it fell over. Patients and nurses watched her approach with
apprehension. Her ward was in a constant condition of flood.
"It's because she's thinking of something else," Anna-Rose tried eagerly
to explain to the indignant sister-in-charge.
"Thinking of something else!" echoed the sister.
"She reads, you see, a lot--whenever she gets the chance she reads--"
"Reads!" echoed the sister.
"And then, you see, she gets thinking--"
"Thinking! Reading doesn't make me think."
"With much regret," wrote the matron to Aunt Alice, "I am obliged to
dismiss your younger niece, Nurse Twinkler II. She has no vocation for
nursing. On the other hand, your elder niece is shaping well and I shall
be pleased to keep her on."
"But I can't stop on," Anna-Rose said to the matron when she
announced these decisions to her. "I can't be separated from my sister.
I'd like very much to know what would become of that poor child
without me to look after her. You forget I'm the eldest."
The matron put down her pen,--she was a woman who made many
notes--and stared at Nurse Twinkler. Not in this fashion did her nurses
speak to her. But Anna-Rose, having been brought up in a spot remote

from everything except love and laughter, had all the fearlessness of
ignorance; and in her extreme youth and smallness, with her eyes
shining and her face heated she appeared to the matron rather like an
indignant kitten.
"Very well," said the matron gravely, suppressing a smile. "One should
always do what one considers one's first duty."
So the Twinklers went back to Uncle Arthur, and the matron was
greatly relieved, for she certainly didn't want them, and Uncle Arthur
said Damn.
"Arthur," gently reproved his wife.
"I say Damn and I mean Damn," said Uncle Arthur. "What the hell can
we--"
"Arthur," said his wife.
"I say, what the hell can we do with a couple of Germans? If people
wouldn't swallow them last winter are they going to swallow them any
better now?