An Engagement on the Rhine

I

THE first time that I saw Wilhelmina, she was in the leading ‘Ladies’ Furnishing’ establishment in Coblenz, trying on sweaters. At that moment she had on a green one with large pockets.

‘Do you like better the green sweat, or do you like better the pink sweat?’ She turned a large but enchanting smile on a young soldier, who was surveying her with the eye of an appraiser.

‘ If you ask me, I would n’t own one of the dumb things, but the green one makes the least noise.’

He looked toward the saleswoman.

‘Say, Fräulein, why don’t you have clothes like they wear in the United States — Vereinigten St-a-a-ten, sabby?’

His pronunciation of the German words was scarcely more illuminating to Fraulein Paula than was his English.

‘The green sweat make so thick; but if you like, I like.’ Wilhelmina’s manner was the age-old subservient one, so gratifying to the dominant male.

‘Sold! The green sweat!’

The soldier removed his shapely leg front the table piled high with garments of many colors, and pulled from his breeches pocket the fattest roll of paper-money ever seen outside a burlesque show.

‘Here you are, Fräulein!’ He peeled oil’ the outer layer and handed it to Fräulein Paula, much as a bank president might knock ashes from a cigar. ‘Light the fire with the change.’

Sweaters being the latest badge of distinction with which the Fräuleins indicated their claim to an American soldier beau, Wilhelmina encased herself in hers, as she proudly prepared to leave on the arm of the munificent giver.

‘And now wego to look at diamonds! '

As I watched their disappearing backs, as unlike as a yacht and a coalbarge, I recalled having seen that particular member of the American Army of Occupation somewhere at Headquarters.

Doubtless his trim appearance had caused his frequent detail as orderly to the various department heads. His somewhat snubbed nose and reddish cast helped further to remind me that I had heard the Chief of Staff, who was incidentally my own lawful chief, call him ‘Flynn.’

His hair was clipped in the approved Rhineland style, almost to baldness just above the collar, but bursting from beneath his overseas cap), like turbulent waves tossing a lifeboat at the last angle of safety. His uniform was not of the ordinary ‘issue’ variety, but cut from officer’s cloth to taper at the waist.

I had been waiting in a corner to be served and, according to recent monarchical standards, I might have reduced Fräulein Paula to a state of supine apology by introducing myself as Frau Colonel, Frau Chief-of-Staff’, or, best of all, Frau Invader Crane. But far from considering myself as ‘rating,’ I was in no hurry to abbreviate a scene that was adding years to my mental age.

It was but a short time since the order forbidding ‘fraternizing’ had been countermanded — perforce. Soon the very word, with its coined contractions, was to become, if not obsolete, not in the best of taste.

The same men who, a little while before, had ridiculed the practice of ‘fratting,’ and the Teutonic curve of beauty in general, were now suddenly appearing on the Rhine promenade and in the cafés, in advanced stages of intimacy with the objects of their former ridicule.

A few days later I was destined to see again the particular example of rapid adaptation called Flynn, when I stepped into the Amaroc office, to advertise in the want column for a cook.

As I sat waiting for the proper official, Flynn stepped into view — Corporal Flynn, as the new chevron on his arm indicated. Pulling down his blouse, he stood in an attitude of almost military attention.

‘If you are looking for a girl, Mrs. Crane, I know just the one you want.'

For obscure reasons, I did not welcome this dispensation. But my lukewarm reply did not lessen the soldier’s faith in the favor he was conferring.

‘She could come and see me, and we could talk it over.’

‘Oh, that’s all right. She can come right away.’

My memory of the girl in the sweater forced me to hedge: —

‘ But will she be able to do the things that servants usually do?’

My benefactor’s countenance scarcely veiled his compassion. However, he stooped neither to defense nor to praise.

‘You ’ll see. She will be all right. I ’ll bring her right around.'

‘Of course, I could n’t think of taking her away from anyone else,’I murmured, hypnotized by his assurance.

‘Oh, that ’s all right. She was going to leave there anyhow.'

In entering upon this particular domestic adventure, I had been upheld by a secret hope that the actual hour of initiation would be unavoidably postponed. Not only did I consider a familiarity with Heine’s Book of Songs a feeble equipment for keeping house in the land of efficient housekeepers, even under normal circumstances; but, under conditions of food-shortage and the necessity of dealing, in a foreign tongue, with a people who had no reason to welcome me, I was doubly intimidated.

But my hour had struck. On returning to the villa which the malice of the billeting officer had inflicted upon us, I found Wilhelmina ensconced, with every appearance of permanence, in ‘The Hall of a Thousand Antlers,’so christened by the Chief of Staff.

There she sat, with her bundles around her, her plum-colored cheeks, and her large sweet smile. I can see her yet, with the large beaver-hat perched high on her magnificent hair, for which the friscur had clone his utmost, and above her the effulgent Flynn, presiding like a modern Greek Fate over my humble destiny.

I assumed an appearance of efficiency ; but my Berlitz method of engaging a servant failed to bring forth the model answers. When I asked Wilhelmina why she left her last place, she answered: —

‘I was by my aunt, gnädige Frau. My bridegroom’ — here she looked at Flynn as a trick terrier watches its master, and corrected herself—‘my boy thinks maybe I work too much by my aunt. My aunt is very good Hausfrau.'

Flynn’s opinion of American housekeepers needed no further elucidation. He read my thoughts, and explained confidentially, excluding Wilhelmina from the conversation: —

‘These German housekeepers are something fierce, Mrs. Crane. Her aunt goes round with a cotton glove and runs her finger everywhere for a speck of dust.'

But I was not to be cajoled.

‘I am afraid the work will be too much for you, if you have never worked out before.'

‘Oh no, gnädige Frau, it is not too much. It is only my boy who so thinks. At home I work much more.'

‘This won’t be anything for her!’ Flynn gave a sweeping gesture, which included the statues of the Trumpeter of Säckingen, the Dying Boar, and all the antlers.

‘But I can’t give you more than eighty marks.’

To Flynn, with his thousands a month, that must have seemed a beggarly sum, although actually thirty marks more than the regular wages.

Again, the result was not at all as scheduled. They evinced a slight amusement but no interest.

‘ It matters not, gnädige Frau. I care nothing,'

I took a fleeting comfort in the thought of the incredulity of my American sisters.

Mechanically I concluded the formula by conferring Sundays and Thursdays ‘off,’ rejoicing in the thought that I too would be free to go forth, unshadowed by foreign domination. But this time I was met with the consternation that should have accompanied the mention of wages.

It was only later that I realized what it would mean to a person who had lived five years on substitutes to be deprived, two evenings a week, of the longed-for white bread and American commissaries. Let me add that, whatever else Wilhelmina missed, she never missed a meal.

II

For a while I was willing to acknowledge that our greatest blessings come m spite of our efforts to prevent them. No new broom ever swept so clean as Wilhelmina. My own particular soldier, who had put up with camp and hotel fare so long, could revel at last in comfortable domesticity.

Wilhelmina scraped the hardwood floors with steel shavings. She mounted on ladders, with buckets of hot suds, and washed each individual crystal of the chandeliers until they dazzled our eyes. She dusted the thousand antlers and the Trumpeter of Säckingen and the Dying Boar. She carried the floorrunners to the roof and beat them. She taught the little Luxemburg maid how to open all the windows, and tear the beds apart with total disregard of the clinging affection of sheet and blanket, until the very mattresses and feather coverlets rose in the air in rampant remonstrance.

Fortunately I was not in the position of one of my compatriots, who had no German and could not stop her nonEnglish-speaking maid from scrubbing. That Wilhelmina sometimes scrubbed at inconvenient hours, I did not at first associate with the fact that those were the hours when Flynn was on duty.

When Wilhelmina had been with me a day or two, I was obliged to fill out a blank for the Bureau of Intelligence, and I asked her for her full name.

‘Wilhelmina Sauerborn. My bridegroom says I am named for the Kaiser, but he makes a joke. Gnädige Frau can call me Minna.’

Minna seldom said a sentence without mentioning her bridegroom, although Flynn did drill her into dropping the expression with everyone but me.

‘My boy says I must “can” the “ bridegroom.” In America one is only bridegroom when one is “tied up.” We will be tied up as soon permission is given. But we have already exchanged rings.’

She showed me the conventional marriage band.

Minna explained that it was a custom in her country to exchange rings when one was as yet merely engaged. Indeed, being engaged was a serious affair. I could not resist asking if Flynn wore his.

‘He carry his in his pocket. He says he is afraid the Dental Corps will steal it while he is sleeping.’

‘But Minna, soldiers do marry and take their brides to America?’

‘We could also be married in that way, but it is not a nice way. Never, never, my boy says, will he be married in that way.’

I returned to the questionnaire. ‘Are you a native of Coblenz?’

‘Oh, no, gnädige Frau. I come from Niedermendig. My father has Wirtshaus and my mother has servants.’

Then followed the story of their love.

Flynn’s captain had been billeted at the Inn of Complete Refreshment, and the inevitable presence of Flynn with the Morning Report, Flynn as orderly, Flynn off duty, being ministered to by the innkeeper’s fair daughter, bore the usual consequences of propinquity.

But Flynn’s natural methods in courtship brought about certain secret treaties between the paternal Sauerborn and the commanding officer, and Flynn was mysteriously transferred lrom the organization at Niedermendig to Headquarters in Coblenz.

Fortunately Papa Sauerborn’s ignorance of the English language prevented a full comprehension of Flynn’s opinion as expressed. Thus, happily, a minor engagement was averted. But Minna, in her enforced capacity as interpreter, was not spared the splendor and volume of her father’s return fire; and this incited her to cast off the old tyranny in favor of the new. She moved to Coblenz, to live ‘by’ her aunt, where Flynn’s resentment that she should be made to drudge must have been a novel and pleasant experience.

At that time the ‘anti-frat’ ruling was still in force, and to see one another they bought adjoining seats at the opera, and met as if by accident, a perfectly transparent ruse, which lost none of its romance through familiarity.

‘ My boy laugh very much when I explain to him what means the opera; but now he says it is no more a warnecessity. Music is always beautiful, is it not? My boy says it is not. I go to hear Zauberflöte many times, but my boy says it is I. C.’

I inferred that Minna meant ‘Inspected and Condemned,’ or, rather, that she used the letters at Flynn’s valuation, just as she changed them later to the more colloquially fashionable ‘Kaputt.’

It was gratifying to note that the rapid assimilation was along American lines. Even when the doughboy condescended to use German terms, he gave them a doughboy flavor that was new and strange. Thus hitherto inconspicuous words were given an eminence which must have surprised the placid natives.

On the other hand, I could have dispensed with Minna’s ready acceptance of some of our unauthorized Americanisms. At first she was puzzled that she could not find such expressions as ‘attaboy’ in her ‘wordbook,’ having used it with unexpected effect. Flynn explained to her that her dictionary was ‘kaputt,’ and that an entirely new language had been invented since the book had been published.

When the Chief of Staff made his one and only attempt to practise a laboriously acquired German sentence on Minna, her reply of ‘fine business’ showed an appreciation of the spirit, if not of the letter. And her habit of saying ‘ Check! ’ by way of approval, doubtless a trick of Flynn’s, held over from some experience as quartermaster in checking up stores, was saved from flippancy by her complacent serenity.

In her dress, Minna was less amenable. She came to me on one occasion with a small toque and a veil in her hand, both of which she regarded with disfavor.

‘My boy buy this for me. He says I must be snug.’

For once I entirely approved of Elvnn’s taste, although for some time I had been looking with disfavor on his habit of buying clothes for Minna.

‘But Flynn is always giving you presents, Minna. The other day it was an umbrella, and not long ago a bead bag.’

‘But it is every time anniversary, gnädige Frau.’

‘Do you mean birthdays?’

‘No, gnädige Frau. But to-day, the twenty-fifth of the month, we did meet for the first time.’

‘And the umbrella?’

‘That was also anniversary. On that day we exchange rings.’

‘From the number of presents, there must be many anniversaries.’

‘Every month, gnädige Frau.’

‘But what will he give you for Christmas?'

‘By that time he will have manymore marks. Surely a diamond.’

Minna’s failure to appreciate our own national conception of innocent flirtation, as exemplified by the pretty nursemaid in one of our army families, came as a deserved rebuke.

‘She has every day a different boy. She laughs and talks with all the men. A German girl does not do that. She has only one boy. Besides, she will catch cold. It is not nice to dress so.’

III

But the course of good housekeeping was not destined to run smooth indefinitely. Dinners, dances, and functions in honor of the Allied High Commission, or the visiting French and British officers from the neighboring bridgeheads, were daily occurrences, so that an evening of peace and quiet appeared to us as a real dissipation.

We had gathered the American papers about us for undisturbed relaxation and enjoyment in the Herrenzimmer, as it was listed in the ‘Inventory’ — the German equivalent of a den; although it was a matter of speculation, how mental repose could be attained in a room so filled with frenzied frescoes and mottoes gone mad.

I was just resisting the effort to follow and separate the different designs, when a low murmur from the hall arrested my attention. The Chief of Staff was reading a frivolous article in the Sunday Supplement. I stepped into the shadow of the ceremonial stairway, and saw, as I expected, Minna entertaining her suitor where she had probably always entertained him.

‘Minna, you would not entertain your soldier-friend in the hallway of a German officer’s house, would you?’

Her response to my stage whisper was flawless in its respectfulness.

‘Oh no, gnädige Frau!’ Her tone of horror was all the justification that I needed.

‘Corporal Flynn is very young and new to the service; but I am sure he understands what is due from an American soldier.’

I had an injured feeling that they both owed me gratitude for saving them from the severity of the Chief of Stalf; but, although Flynn had sprung to his feet in an attitude of utter respect, I knew in that moment of revelation that not only would he never cross my threshold again, but that a contest for the control of my household was about to begin, and that the loser was foreordained.

All might still have been well, however, had it not been for the marketing, and other legitimate outings of a German cook.

I had discovered that, it was only in families of the lower middle class that the lady of the house went forth to buy the staples of life. I might have defied this social custom, with relish even, in my desire to carry a market-basket gayly painted with daisies, had it not been the better part of valor to hand over the adventure to the more conversant Minna.

For adventure it certainly was, as fresh supplies could never be counted on, even in the stores that sold nothing else. Butter and eggs and lard did not necessarily mean butter and eggs and lard, and the merchants would stare with surprise if they were expected to have what they advertised in gilt lettering on the windowpanes.

Minna’s sources of information were Egyptian, and it can be seen that I could not check her up when she said that eggs were to be obtained one day in the Entenphule Gasse, and another day in the Altengraben. She might have obtained them around the corner, and promenaded the rest of the time with an Irish corporal by the name of Flynn, for all I could tell.

In addition to the marketing, there was Mass, which my conscience would not permit me to question. And then there was the opera. I enjoyed the thought of Flynn at the opera. But nothing would have mattered had it not been for the ‘wine parties.’

I had noticed that the giving of gifts was invariably accompanied by a ‘wine party,’in which the great American spirit of jollification joined hands with the Teutonic anniversary worship.

Minna, accustomed from childhood to the sight of wine, showed no signs of indulgence; but it was evident from her air of subdued pride that Flynn’s temper was taking on the acidulous quality of the nat ive grape. Moreover, his native talent for embroidering the truth was exceeding the bounds of admissible ‘soldier dope.’

I did n’t mind his telling her that in the States the officers’ wives would call upon her, or that he had had his picture taken in a cinematograph talking to the President. But the time came for an appeal to a higher court.

Minna had asked my permission to visit her home, in honor of the ‘name’sday’ of her little sister Gustel, whose picture, with frizzled flaxen hair, I had been called upon to admire.

If there was room in Minna’s being for two emotions, the second was her love for children. Therefore it was with sympathy that I consented to the trip to Niedermendig, although it necessitated her being absent overnight, and extra work for Sophie.

As there was no possible train on which she could return, I was surprised that evening to find her in the kitchen, flanked by the blood sausage and coffee cake which her mother had sent me.

‘But Minna, how did you get here?’

‘My bridegroom brought me in the general’s car.’

‘What do you mean — in the general’s car?’

I sat down as Minna stood up.

‘My boy asked the general’s permission. Only I had to get out on the outside of town, because the M. P.’s would not understand.’

‘I should say they would n’t. Flynn could n’t have asked the general’s permission, because the general gave a dinner at the Casino, where he has been for the last five hours.’

If I thought to unmask Flynn, I did not know my Irishman.

‘I know, gnädige Frau. My boy went to the Casino to ask the general’s permission.’

I was silent with admiration.

A few days later, the Chief of Staff was obliged to leave without his lunch to keep an official appointment, because Minna was late. She was cheerfully unapologetic.

‘I met my bridegroom.’

‘Minna, this can’t go on any longer.’

‘Shall I go, gnädige Frau?’

I resented being made a guardian of morals, but I was unable to free myself from a sense of responsibility. I told myself that I would send Manna away, and hesitated; and while I hesitated, Minna unexpectedly fell ill.

IV

Doubtless her illness was aggravated by her inability to see Flynn. She lay in bed, in a starched and frilled nightgown, with her hair beautifully dressed, surrounded by photographs of Flynn and by commissary delicacies sent by Flynn. Her aunt’s little daughter, Kätchen, came to wait upon her, and to run errands, the principal ones being the carrying of notes to Flynn. Nor did she hesitate to lift up her voice and weep.

‘Why docs he not come? When he had the flu, I took care of him, and he cannot even come to see me. He send me bonbons— but what do I care for that stuff!’

All the stern things I had meant to say were forgotten in the face of Minna’s distress, but I realized that something would have to be done. The Chief of Staff was fretting under the enforced wanderings from the Riesenfurstenhof to the Schloss Café for our dinners, and the inability to find out from day to day when Minna was going to get well.

The necessity of renewing my subscription at the Amaroc office appeared to me as an imperative duty. A meeting with Flynn could be only incidental and accidental, for my dignity’s sake. When I caught sight of him flipping coins in an inner office, I realized that he was as impudently inaccessible as if he had been on the other side of the earth.

Like a certain heroic battalion during the war, I did not understand the word ‘retreat.’ The young captain who edited the news-organ for the Army of Occupation had asked my coöperation in preventing Minna from going to see Flynn at the Amaroc offices, and now I asked him to summon Flynn to speak to me.

That Flynn was compelled to come did not lessen my sense of surrender.

‘Corporal, will you come to see Minna?’

‘I can’t do it, Mrs. Crane.’

‘But I ask you — through the front door, if you like.’

‘I am sorry, Mrs. Crane, but I can’t do it.’

I understood the impulse that prompted the emperors of Rome to say: ‘Throw this man to the lions!’ Fortunately, the habits of civilization prevailed, and I said with a gentleness that was in reverse proportion to my feelings:—

‘But Minna may be very sick, and she is calling for you.’

Flynn expressed as much sarcasm as was possible to a snub nose and curly hair: —

‘She knows how she can see me. I tell you, Mrs. Crane, when these German women get an idea in their heads, they are worse than an army mule.’

Minna, holding out against Flynn, put a new and agreeable light on the matter. I was willing to plant my flag beside hers if it were a question of bringing him to terms. But his next words destroyed all hope that he would bow that proud head.

‘My time is nearly up, and I have asked for a discharge and return to the States.’

Consistency forbade me to make any reply that was not approval. I went home with an uneasy sense of tottering standards, a distorted perspective, and a muddled point of view, which I was not able to conceal, and which brought forth the deserved comment from the Chief of Staff: —

‘I thought you disapproved of marriages between soldiers and German girls?’

‘I do — theoretically. But it does seem rather too bad of Flynn. He has upset my household. He has caused me to feel guilty and responsible. He has involved me in his love-affair when I don’t wish to be involved, and now he calmly leaves the matter to me to settle, and sails away.’

I told Minna merely that I had asked Flynn to come, and that he had refused.

She only moaned: ‘He is so proud. Why cannot he give up his pride for me?’

Circumstances were closing in upon me.

‘Minna, I am going to write to your mother.’

‘My mother will everything arrange. She likes my boy.’

This was decidedly encouraging.

‘Will your father let you go home?’

‘My mother will arrange with my father.’

A discovery that the distaff side of the family was not without its influence lifted an enormous weight from my spirit.

V

My letter brought forth a succession of delegations, one of which, consisting of Minna’s mother and aunt, florid and capable and indistinguishable, assisted the trembling Minna into a cab and carried her off to the train.

Another was ushered in by Sophie: with as near an approach to a giggle as her training would permit, she announced two male visitors.

Papa Sauerborn was small and round and red; he sat on the edge of his chair, and fingered his hat in a disarming meekness.

The other, who played the part of interpreter, belonged evidently to young revolutionary Germany; he was burdened neither with timidity nor with superficial politeness. He opened the conversation.

‘Gnädige Frau is perhaps surprised at this visit, but the matter stands thus. This Flynn, after announcing that he will marry Fraulein Minna, now refuses to do so.’

‘But he is not permitted to.’

‘It seems that there are steps he might take, and also steps that the Fräulein might take to bring the matter to a conclusion. But he has her so bewitched that she will not make the attempt unless he so says. The Herr thought, that perhaps the gnädige Frau is so kind as to obtain the interference of the highly placed and highly honored Herr Husband —'

‘Oh, but I could n’t think of it. American wives never interfere in official matters.’

The interview was beginning to afford compensations. Papa Sauerborn could not miss the éclat of my delivery, even though my words lost much of their meaning through their transformation into something deep and guttural.

‘The Herr says that, in view of the fact that the Occupation forbids marriage between soldiers and German girls, it is very painful for parents to see their daughters exposed to intimacy, with what consequences one never knows. The Herr did never wish the marriage with this Flynn.’

Although thoroughly in harmony with the desires of Papa Sauerborn, I resented hotly his lack of appreciation of the high honor of such an alliance.

‘Is it because Corporal Flynn is an American that Mr. Sauerborn objects?'

‘Never in the world, gnädige Frau! The Herr likes very much the Americans. He hopes the soldiers will stay here a long time; but he says that this Flynn has nothing laid by with which to start a household and bring up a family. To be a soldier is in itself not a profession. In Germany a man always has a trade, is it not so? Therefore, because this Flynn could not show that he had a nest egg laid by or an assured occupation, the Herr told him outright ly that the dowry would not be forthcoming.’

‘But Corporal Flynn would not accept it. In our country, men support their wives,’ I interrupted with fire.

That this javelin struck wide of the mark was indicated by puzzled headshakings.

‘So he said, very strangely. He even said he would throw the with-so-muchcare-hand-embroidered linen from the hope-chest in the face of the Herr. Such a thing has never before been. All this at a time when the Herr had a very advantageous understanding with a worthy citizen from Mayen, who sought the hand of Fräulein Minna. A very well-established owner of a quarry, whom the Herr was obliged greatly to offend. However, the Herr says he must now himself submit. After all, a father’s heart wishes the happiness of his child. He is willing now to provide the dowry, only that everything should be satisfactorily arranged.’

With some misgivings, I stopped the young man before he imperiled himself in another tangled construction.

‘It is too late.’ And I explained Flynn’s discharge and departure on the transport.

Instead of the outburst I expected, the father became a little deeper red and a little more ill at ease.

‘It is not good,’ the interpreter conveyed, ‘but perhaps in the end it is for the best. If he is not here, it may be that she will in time forget, and the matter will itself arrange.’

Was he thinking of the estimable citizen from Mayen, I wondered.

They bowed themselves out, and I closed the door, permanently I thought, on the little drama.

VI

Some months later, I was permitted to accompany the Chief of Staff on an expedition connected with the Department of Intelligence — a privilege that I owed to the fact that my feminine presence would serve to hide the serious and confidential nature of the trip.

These journeyings over roads as smooth as billiard tables, through avenues of wind-blown trees, never lost their charm. The car-window formed a frame for pictures of checkerboard fields newly drenched with rain, or sunlit and wooded hills bearing aloft some mediæval stronghold.

The gray houses of the villages huddled together like sheep in a storm, watched over by the spire of a church or a Roman tower. These towns opened their narrow streets to receive us; but even so, it looked as if the clumsy Cadillac would become wedged in the twists and turns, or between the overhanging upper stories.

And everywhere there were children — children who threw stones at the car; children who took care of smaller children; children who ran errands over the slippery cobblestones, or swept the hard earth round the doorway with witches’ brooms. Doubtless because of the absence of their elders in the fields, it seemed as if there were no other inhabitants.

The Chief of Staff held a map on his knees, and consulted with an orderly interpreter, who likewise consulted a map and gave instructions to the driver. We read the wooden signs at the crossroads and compared them with the names on the post offices in the centre of the towns. On one of these posts I was gratified to recognize a name: ‘Two kilometres to Niedermendig.’

The Chief of Staff announced that he would have to leave me to find my own entertainment in the next village. I wavered between excessive willingness, which might seem overdone, and resignation, which would be actually hypocritical. On the very outskirts we read, in large letters which could be seen at a distance, across the side wall of a house: ‘Inn of Complete Refreshment.’

As the car stopped in front of a small entrance, mine host and his wife appeared magically on the flagging, looking exactly as a host and his wife might, be expected to look. When they caught sight of me, the circles of their eyes in the rosy circles of their faces became almost humanly expressive.

The Chief of Staff’ covered whatever embarrassment they may have felt by handing me out like a small package, and shouting smilingly as people do in speaking to foreigners: —

‘ I am going to leave my wife in your care for a while.’

With a salute, he was in the car and off.

My hosts, who had absorbed the meaning, if not the actual words, ushered me into a glass enclosure, which caught the late winter sunshine and feebly reproduced the delights of summer. The blue-tiled floor and the red-checked tablecloths gave a gay warm look, greatly heightened by the castles, frescoed on the house wall, of Lahneck, Rheinstein, and Stolzenfels, if one could believe the inscriptions underneath.

Papa Sauerborn discreetly withdrew, perhaps at a sign from his wife, who hovered over me in a flutter of timid good-will. I am sure that the variety of small breads, cheesecakes, and preserves, which she pressed upon me, was not included in the usual traveler’s order. My German having improved sufficiently, I decided to be the one to break the ice and bring up Minna’s name. Frau Sauerborn’s face broke into a broad smile.

‘She will soon be quite recovered’; and then, emboldened by the friendly opening, she ventured: ‘ If gnädige Frau would so far trouble herself as to mount the stairs, it would give my daughter great happiness.’

As we passed through the narrow hallway and up t he stairs, whose steps were worn into curved hollows shiny with much scrubbing, the mother said in a low voice: —

‘ I don’t know if I should tell gnädige Frau, but our Minna is married.’

‘Oh!’ I stammered, as visions of the quarry-owner from Mayen flitted through my mind. ‘Are you glad?’ were the words I summoned from my limited vocabulary.

‘It has turned out for the best.’

My speculations came to an end soon after I entered the room with its tiny windows and shrine to the Virgin. There lay Minna in her starched and frilled nightgown, with her hair arranged as if fresh from the hand of the friseur, holding in the loop of her arm a small object, with a tuft of what was unmistakably red hair on the top of its head.

‘O gnädige Frau!' she exclaimed, with a smile that surpassed the sunlight that filtered through the white curtains, ‘is he not all sweetest? A ringer for his father, is he not?'

This echo of Flynn was clear.

At that moment, with a murmured ‘Gnädige Frau will excuse,’ — I thought she added: ‘We have to-day newly slaughtered,’ — the mother withdrew, and Minna anticipated the questions that sprang to my lips.

‘Gnadige Frau, I go to America as soon as I am well; but do not tell my father.’

‘Is the corporal coming to get you?’

‘I and my son cannot go alone.’

A suspicion arose in my mind that Minna was attempting evasion. I wanted to ask her when she had married, and what had become of Flynn; but an automobile horn from below recalled me to a tardy admiration of the youthful Flynn, which, under no circumstances, could have been omitted, and a rapid good-bye.

At the foot of the stairs, Frau Sauerborn met me with some fresh provender, for which I had bargained during our previous conversation. She added that she was sorry she could not let me have some new potatoes, but the men were just beginning to gather them in. That was where her husband had gone. I might see them working in the fields on the way home.

As we left Niedermendig behind us, and saw the men turning up the moist black earth, it occurred to me — ever on the hunt for food — that it would be a praiseworthy idea to buy a sack of potatoes.

Leaving a slightly skeptical Chief of Staff, I ran over the sticky furrows, in the direction of a stooping figure in blue jeans, who was shoveling tubers from a small pyramid into a sack. The stooping figure looked up, and I gazed straight into the blue eyes of Flynn. Wordlessly we met, and wordlessly we were about to part, when that, universal impulse that levels all differences overtook me.

’I saw the baby.’

Flynn’s face shone like the morning sun.

‘Not much the matter with him, is there, Mrs. Crane? Does he look as if he was “made in Germany”?’

‘He looks just like you, Flynn.’

The Chief of Staff accepted my bare statement that potatoes could not be had; and, as we bowled over the wonderful roads, a turn in the conversation made it natural to ask: —

‘Have there been many desertions from the transports of men who want to stay over?’

‘There are usually four or five who don’t appear at roll call.’

‘Do you try to find them?’

‘If it does n’t cost too much.’ — He changed the subject. ‘Do you want me to show you the hope of this country? ’

As we slowed up to enter one of the villages, the children flocked to meet us. They ran in front of the car at the risk of their lives, and followed us with cries until we were out of sight.