There was a great silence while I was given a cup of coffee and some cake by Frau Bornsted, helped by her sister.  The young man, the third in our trio of youth, sat motionless in the chair next to me while this was done.  I wanted to fetch my cup myself, rather than let Frau Bornsted wait on me, but she pressed me down into my chair again with firmness and the pained look of one who is witnessing the committing of a solecism. “Bitte—­take place again,” she said, her English giving way in the stress of getting me to behave as I should.

The women looked on with open interest and curiosity, examining my clothes and hair and hands and the Bibles I was clutching and the flowers I had stuck in where the Psalms are, because I never can find the Psalms right off.  The men looked too, but with caution.  I was fearfully untidy.  You would have been shocked.  But I don’t know how one is to lie about on moss all day and stay neat, and nobody told me I was going to tumble into the middle of a party.

The first to disentangle himself from the rest and come and speak to me was Frau Bornsted’s father, Pastor Wienicke.  He came and stood in front of me, his legs apart and a cigar in his mouth, and he took the cigar out to tell me, what I already knew, that I was English. “Sie sind englisch,” said Herr Pastor Wienicke.

“Ja,” said I, as modestly as I could, which wasn’t very.

There was something about the party that made me sit up on the edge of my chair with my feet neatly side by side, and hold my cup as carefully as if I had been at a school treat and expecting the rector every minute.  “England,” said the pastor, while everybody else listened,—­he spoke in German—­“is, I think I may say, still a great country.”

“Ja?” said I politely, tilting up the ja a little at its end, which was meant to suggest not only a deferential, “If you say so it must be so” attitude, but also a courteous doubt as to whether any country could properly be called great in a world in which the standard of greatness was set by so splendid an example of it as his own country.

And it did suggest this, for he said, “Oh doch,” balancing himself on his heels and toes alternately, as though balancing himself into exact justice. “Oh doch. I think one may honestly say she still is a great country, But—­” and he raised his voice and his forefinger at me,—­“let her beware of her money bags.  That is my word to England:  Beware of thy money bags.”

There was a sound of approval in the room, and they all nodded their heads.

He looked at me, and as I supposed he might be expecting an answer I thought I had better say ja again, so I did.

“England,” he then continued, “is our cousin, our blood-relation.  Therefore is it that we can and must tell her the truth, even if it is unpalatable.”

“Ja,” I said, as he paused again; only there were several little things I would have liked to have said about that, if I had been able to talk German properly.  But I had nothing but my list of exclamations and the psalms I had learnt ready.  So I said Ja, and tried to look modest and intelligent.