what he did; Robin had hit on it at last.  This extraordinary uncle obeyed his niece; and Robin knew very well that Germany was the last country in the world to produce men who did that.  Had he not a cousin who had married a German officer?  A whilom gay and sprightly cousin, who spent her time, as she dolefully wrote, having her mind weeded of its green growth of little opinions and gravelled and rolled and stamped with the opinions of her male relations-in-law.  “And I’d rather have weeds than gravel,” she wrote at the beginning of this process when she was still restive under the roller, “for they at least are green.”  But long ago she had left off complaining, long ago she too had entered into the rest that remaineth for him who has given up, who has become what men praise as reasonable and gods deplore as dull, who is tired of bothering, tired of trying, tired of everything but sleep.  Then there was the girl’s maid.  This was the first time Robin had seen her; and while she was helping Mrs. Pearce pour out cups of chocolate and put a heaped spoonful of whipped cream on the top of each cup in the fashion familiar to Germans and altogether lovely in the eyes of the children of Symford, Robin went to her and offered help.

Annalise looked at him with heavy eyes, and shook her head.

“She don’t speak no English, sir,” explained Mrs. Pearce.  “This one’s pure heathen.”

“No English,” echoed Annalise drearily, who had at least learned that much, “no English, no English.”

Robin gathered up his crumbs of German and presented them to her with a smile.  Immediately on hearing her own tongue she flared into life, and whipping out a little pocket-book and pencil asked him eagerly where she was.

“Where you are?” repeated Robin, astonished.

“Ja, Ja.  The address.  This address.  What is it?  Where am I?”

“What, don’t you know?”

“Tell me—­quick,” begged Annalise.

“But why—­I don’t understand.  You must know you are in England?”

“England!  Naturally I know it is England.  But this—­where is it?  What is its address?  For letters to reach me?  Quick—­tell me quick!”

Robin, however, would not be quick.  “Why has no one told you?” he asked, with an immense curiosity.

“Ach, I have not been told.  I know nothing.  I am kept in the dark like—­like a prisoner.”  And Annalise dragged her handkerchief out of her pocket, and put it to her eyes just in time to stop her ready tears from falling into the whipped cream and spoiling it.

“There she goes again,” sniffed Mrs. Pearce.  “It’s cry, cry, from morning till night, and nothing good enough for her.  It’s a mercy she goes out of this to-morrow.  I never see such an image.”

“Tell me,” implored Annalise, “tell me quick, before my mistress—­”