For two years after my people left the old home in Wales I had been sent to the same finishing school in Berlin as Muriel Elvey. That was five or six years ago now. But I remembered, I believed I could have spoken to these men in their own tongue.
Only—no, I couldn't have spoken to them. I should have hated to think of their being badly treated, these Germans; starved or tortured as they tortured and starved our British soldiers when wounded and helpless in their hands. That would have made me unhappy, not so much for them as for ourselves to think that we Britons could sink to such acts.
Personally, I didn't want to show any kindness to these men. Let them, now they were deprived of the power to do any more mischief, be of as much use as they could.
I didn't want to question them or look at them either out of good-nature or curiosity. A sudden hard coldness fell upon me as I saw that big fellow in the sailor's cap.
A German sailor! What does that say? I had had one brother at sea, mine-sweeping—Jack—who used to sing:
"I'll sail with the scum of the lowest towns,
But not with such the Likes o' They!"
He had been shot as he put off in an open boat from his wrecked ship.
No, I didn't want to speak German. I didn't want any German to get a word from the lips of an English girl.
But Muriel Elvey cried with a laugh:
"Oh, call them up. What fun! I'll speak to them!"