Christopher and Columbus. Elizabeth von Arnim

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СКАЧАТЬ send you off like this before she has taught you even the ABC of manners," said the lower berth.

      "Evidently," said the upper berth, "she can have none herself."

      "Evidently," said the lower berth, "she is herself salop."

      The sponge, dripping with water, came quickly out of the basin in Anna-Rose's clenched fist. For one awful instant she stood there in her nightgown, like some bird of judgment poised for dreadful flight, her eyes flaming, her knotted pigtails bristling on the top of her head.

      The wet sponge twitched in her hand. The ladies did not realize the significance of that twitching, and continued to offer large angry faces as a target. One of the faces would certainly have received the sponge and Anna-Rose have been disgraced for ever, if it hadn't been for the prompt and skilful intervention of Anna-Felicitas.

      For Anna-Felicitas, roused from her morning languor by the unusual loudness of the German ladies' voices, and smitten into attention and opening of her eyes, heard the awful things they were saying and saw the sponge. Instantly she knew, seeing it was Anna-Rose who held it, where it would be in another second, and hastily putting out a shaking little hand from her top berth, caught hold feebly but obstinately of the upright ends of Anna-Rose's knotted pigtails.

      "I'm going to be sick," she announced with great presence of mind and entire absence of candour.

      She knew, however, that she only had to sit up in order to be sick, and the excellent child—das gute Kind, as her father used to call her because she, so conveniently from the parental point of view, invariably never wanted to be or do anything particularly—without hesitation sacrificed herself in order to save her sister's honour, and sat up and immediately was.

      By the time Anna-Rose had done attending to her, all fury had died out. She never could see Anna Felicitas lying back pale and exhausted after one of these attacks without forgiving her and everybody else everything.

      She climbed up on the wooden steps to smoothe her pillow and tuck her blanket round her, and when Anna-Felicitas, her eyes shut, murmured, "Christopher—don't mind them—" and she suddenly realized, for they never called each other by those names except in great moments of emotion when it was necessary to cheer and encourage, what Anna-Felicitas had saved her from, and that it had been done deliberately, she could only whisper back, because she was so afraid of crying, "No, no, Columbus dear—of course—who really cares about them—" and came down off the steps with no fight left in her.

      Also the wrath of the ladies was considerably assuaged. They had retreated behind their curtains until the so terribly unsettled Twinkler should be quiet again, and when once more they drew them a crack apart in order to keep an eye on what the other one might be going to do next and saw her doing nothing except, with meekness, getting dressed, they merely inquired what part of Westphalia she came from, and only in the tone they asked it did they convey that whatever part it was, it was anyhow a contemptible one.

      "We don't come from Westphalia," said Anna-Rose, bristling a little, in spite of herself, at their persistent baiting.

      Anna-Felicitas listened in cold anxiousness. She didn't want to have to be sick again. She doubted whether she could bear it.

      "You must come from somewhere," said the lower berth, "and being a Twinkler it must be Westphalia."

      "We don't really," said Anna-Rose, mindful of Anna-Felicitas's words and making a great effort to speak politely. "We come from England."

      "England!" cried the lower berth, annoyed by this quibbling. "You were born in Westphalia. All Twinklers are born in Westphalia."

      "Invariably they are," said the upper berth. "The only circumstance that stops them is if their mothers happen to be temporarily absent."

      "But we weren't, really," said Anna-Rose, continuing her efforts to remain bland.

      "Are you pretending—pretending to us," said the lower berth lady, again beating her hand on the edge of her bunk, "that you are not German?"

      "Our father was German," said Anna-Rose, driven into a corner, "but I don't suppose he is now. I shouldn't think he'd want to go on being one directly he got to a really neutral place."

      "Has he fled his country?" inquired the lower berth sternly, scenting what she had from the first suspected, something sinister in the Twinkler background.

      "I suppose one might call it that," said Anna-Rose after a pause of consideration, tying her shoe-laces.

      "Do you mean to say," said the ladies with one voice, feeling themselves now on the very edge of a scandal, "he was forced to fly from Westphalia?"

      "I suppose one might put it that way," said Anna-Rose, again considering.

      She took her cap off its hook and adjusted it over her hair with a deliberation intended to assure Anna-Felicitas that she was remaining calm. "Except that it wasn't from Westphalia he flew, but Prussia," she said.

      "Prussia?" cried the ladies as one woman, again rising themselves on their elbows.

      "That's where our father lived," said Anna-Rose, staring at them in her surprise at their surprise. "So of course, as he lived there, when he died he did that there too."

      "Prussia?" cried the ladies again. "He died? You said your father fled his country."

      "No. You said that," said Anna-Rose.

      She gave her cap a final tug down over her ears and turned to the door. She felt as if she quite soon again in spite of Anna-Felicitas, might not be able to be a lady.

      "After all, it is what you do when you go to heaven," she said as she opened the door, unable to resist, according to her custom, having the last word.

      "But Prussia?" they still cried, still button-holing her, as it were, from afar. "Then—you were born in Prussia?"

      "Yes, but we couldn't help it," said Anna-Rose; and shut the door quickly behind her.

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