Good Old Anna | Page 9

lady, like Anna herself, was a German; and, apart
altogether from every other consideration, including Anna's passionate
love of Miss Rose, nothing would have made her take service with a
mistress of her own nationality.
"This Mrs. Hirsch me to save her money wants. Her kind I know," she
observed to the emissary who had been sent to sound her. "You can say
that Anna Bauer a good mistress has, and knows when she well suited
is."
She had said nothing of the matter to Mrs. Otway, but even so she
sometimes thought of that offer, and she often felt a little sore when she

reflected on the wages some of the easy-going servants who formed
part of the larger households in the Close received from their
employers.
Yet, in this all-important matter of money a stroke of extraordinary
good luck had befallen Anna--one of those things that very seldom
come to pass in our work-a-day world. It had happened, or perhaps it
would be truer to say it had begun--for, unlike most pieces of good
fortune, it was continuous--just three years ago, in the autumn of 1911,
shortly after her return from that glorious holiday at Berlin. This secret
stroke of luck, for she kept it jealously to herself, though there was
nothing about it at all to her discredit, had now lasted for over thirty
months, and it had had the agreeable effect of greatly increasing her
powers of saving. Of saving, that is, against the day when she would go
back to Germany, and live with her niece.
Mrs. Otway would have been surprised indeed had she known that
Anna not only meant to leave the Trellis House, but that, in a quiet,
reflective kind of way, she actually looked forward to doing so. Miss
Rose would surely marry, for a good many pleasant-mannered
gentlemen came and went to the Trellis House (though none of them
were as rich as Anna would have liked one of them to be), and she
herself would get past her work. When that had come to pass she would
go and live with her niece in Berlin. She had not told her daughter of
this arrangement, and it had been spoken of by Willi and her niece
more as a joke than anything else; still, Anna generally managed to
carry through what she had made up her mind to accomplish.
But on this August morning, standing there by the kitchen window of
the Trellis House, the future was far from good old Anna's mind. Her
mind was fixed on the present. How tiresome, how foolish of England
to have mixed up with a quarrel which did not concern her! How
strange that she, Anna Bauer, in spite of that word of warning from
Berlin, had suspected nothing!
As a matter of fact Mrs. Otway had said something to her about Servia
and Austria--something, too, more in sorrow than in anger, of Germany
"rattling her sword." But she, Anna, had only heard with half an ear.

Politics were out of woman's province. But there! English ladies were
like that.
Many a time had Anna laughed aloud over the antics of the Suffragettes.
About a month ago the boy who brought the meat had given her a long
account of a riot--it had been a very little one--provoked by one such
lady madwoman in the market-place of Witanbury itself. In wise
masculine Germany the lady's relatives (for, strange to say, the
Suffragette in question had been a high-born lady) would have put her
in the only proper place for her, an idiot asylum.
Anna had been genuinely shocked and distressed on learning that her
beloved nursling, Miss Rose, secretly rather sympathised with this mad
female wish for a vote. Why, in Germany only some of the men had
votes, and yet Germany was the most glorious, prosperous, and
much-to-be-feared nation in the world. "Church, Kitchen, and
Children"--that should be, and in the Fatherland still was, every true
woman's motto and province.
Anna's mind came back with a sudden jerk to this morning's surprising,
almost incredible news. Since her two ladies had gone out, she had
opened the newspapers on her kitchen table and read the words for
herself--"England Declares War on Germany." But how could England
do such a thing, when England had no Army? True, she had ships--but
then so now had Germany!
During that blissful holiday in Berlin, Anna had been persuaded to join
the German Navy League. She had not meant to keep up her
subscription, small though it was, after her return to England, but rather
to her disgust she had found that one of the few Germans she knew in
Witanbury represented the League, and that her name had been sent to
him as that of a new member. Twice