A FRIEND IN NEED
When the woman returned to us she had quite thrown off her emotional outburst at our meeting, and her first words were a warning not to speak another word of English.
"I couldn't help it at first, I was so excited; but it would ruin me if it was known that I'm British," she declared, and over the breakfast she told us her story.
She was from Cork, where she had married a German baker named Fischer, had come to Germany a few years later, had been a widow for five years, and had continued to carry on the business of the inn. She was very curious to learn the truth about the war; and when I had satisfied her, we settled down to the consideration of her own affairs.
We returned confidence for confidence: that Nessa and I were engaged to be married; how I had come from England to find her; the plight she had been in owing to von Erstein's persecution; that we had been in the train smash, and had escaped with our lives, but had lost the passports.
She knew the von Erstein type of German well enough to sympathize deeply with Nessa and listened in tears to that part of the story.
"I can help you both, and I will; but you'll have to be as cautious as a pair of wild birds. They're just grabbing the men into the army with both hands, for one thing, and they'll take you at sight, and then what would she do, poor thing?"
"But aren't a lot of mechanics exempted?"
"Do you know anything about such things really?"
"Most there is to know about motors and aeroplanes."