"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.