Page:Wounded Souls.djvu/187

 we welcome you to our house not as an enemy, because the war finished with the Armistice, but as an Englishman who may come to be our friend."

"Thanks," said Brand.

He could find nothing else to say at the moment, but spoke that one word gratefully.

The mother added something to her daughter's speech.

"We believed the English were our friends before they declared war upon us. We were deeply saddened by our mistake."

"It was inevitable," said Brand, "after what had happened."

The daughter—her name was Elsa—put her hand on her mother's arm with a quick gesture of protest against any other words about the war.

"I will show Captain Brand to his rooms."

Brand wondered at her quickness in knowing his name after one glance at his billeting-paper, and said, "Please do not trouble, gnädiges Fräulein," when he saw a look of disapproval, almost of alarm, on the mother's face.

"It will be better for Truda to show the gentleman to his rooms. I will ring for her."

Elsa von Kreuzenach challenged her mother's authority by a smile of amusement, and there was a slight deepening of that delicate colour in her face.

"Truda is boiling the usual cabbage for the usual Mittagessen. I will go, mother."

She turned to Brand with a smile, and bowed to him.

"I will act as your guide upstairs, Captain Brand. After that, you may find your own way. It is not difficult."

Brand, who described the scene to me, told me that the girl went very quickly up a wide flight of stairs, so that in his big riding-boots he found it difficult to keep pace with her. She went down a long corridor lined with