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Updated: June 20, 2025
"Aren't you looking forward to the holidays?" "I don't know. I'd rather be staying here if I'm not coming back after." "To stay in Germany? You'd rather do that than anything?" "Rather." "Here, with Fraulein Pfaff?" "Of course, here with Fraulein Pfaff. I'd rather be in Germany than anything." Millie stood staring with her pout and her slightly raised eyebrows at the frosted window.
Germany was all around them. They were in the midst of it. Fraulein Pfaff seemed far away.... How strange of her to send them there.... She glanced towards the two tables of English girls in the centre of the room wondering whether they felt as she did.... They had come to Germany. They were sharing it with her. It must he changing them. They must be different for having come.
Tea was over. Fraulein decided against a walk and they all trooped into the saal. No programme was suggested; they all sat about unoccupied. There was no centre; Fraulein Pfaff was one of them. The little group near her in the shady half of the sunlit summer-house was as quietly easy as those who sat far back in the saal.
Miriam was beginning to know that she did not want to talk to her girls. Almost from the first she had begun to know it. She felt sure that if Fraulein Pfaff had been invisibly present at any one of her solitary conversational encounters with these German girls she would have been judged and condemned. Elsa Speier had been the worst.
Fraulein Pfaff would expect her to and would be disgusted if she were not quick she towelled frantically at the short strands round her forehead, despairingly screwed them into Hinde's and towelled at the rest. What had the other girls done?
Brough's... that was as bad, because they were not sermons.... either kind was bad and ought not to be allowed... a homily... sermons... homilies... a quiet homily might be something rather nice... and have not Charity sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.... Caritas... I have none I am sure.... Fraulein Pfaff would listen.
The sunlight poured over her and her companions from the great windows behind Fraulein Pfaff.... When breakfast was over and the girls were clearing the table, Fraulein went to one of the great windows and stood for a moment with her hands on the hasp of the innermost of the double frames. "Balde, balde," Miriam heard her murmur, "werden wir offnen konnen." Soon, soon we may open.
Fraulein Pfaff rose and moved away. The girls were arranging the chairs in two rows plates and cups were collected and carried away. It dawned on Miriam that they were going to have prayers. What a wet-blanket on her evening. Everything had been so bright and exciting so far. Obviously they had prayers every night. She felt exceedingly uncomfortable. She had never seen prayers in a sitting-room.
Emma's hand was on her arm under a mass of fern and grasses. Voices quivered and laughed. Miriam looked again and again at Pastor Lahmann sitting almost opposite to her, next to Fraulein Pfaff. She could look at him more easily than at either of the girls. She felt that only he could feel the beauty of the evening exactly as she did. Several times she met and quietly contemplated his dark eyes.
The time that was not taken up by the masters and the regular succession of rich and savoury meals wastefully plentiful they seemed to Miriam was filled in by Fraulein Pfaff with occupations devised apparently from hour to hour. On a master's morning the girls collected in the schoolroom one by one as they finished their bed-making and dusting.
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