“I think you have something of the German in you.”
“She has, she has,” said Minna from the little arbour where she sat with Millie. “She is not English.”
They had eaten their lunch at a little group of arboured tables at the back of an old wooden inn. Fräulein had talked history to those nearest to her and sat back at last with her gauze veil in place, tall and still in her arbour, sighing happily now and again and making her little sounds of affectionate raillery as the girls finished their coffee and jested and giggled together across their worm-eaten, green-painted tables.
“You have beautiful old towns and villages in England,” said Fräulein, yawning slightly.
“Yes—but not anything like this.”
“Oh, Gertrude, that isn’t true. We have.”
“Then they’re hidden from view, my dear Mill, not visible to the naked eye,” laughed Gertrude.
“Tell us, my Millie,” encouraged Fräulein, “say what you have in mind. Perhaps Gairtrud does not know the English towns and villages as well as you do.”
The German girls attended eagerly.
“I can’t tell you the names of the places,” said Millie, “but I have seen pictures.”