As she lay in bed that night, propped up on one elbow so that she could look down the mountain side to the lake, Flip had a surprising sense of homecoming. She had missed, without realizing that she had missed it, being able to see the lake and the mountains of France from her bed, and they seemed to welcome her back. And when she lay down, the familiar pattern of light on the ceiling was a reassuring sight. As she began to get sleepy she sang in her mind, _On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree_, and reached up to feel the silver pear on its slender chain about her neck. 8 "At last!" Erna said the next morning as the three of them slipped into the classroom. "Go on, quick, before someone comes in." Jackie stepped onto the teacher's platform and climbed up onto the table, sitting on it cross legged. "Yes, do hurry," Flip begged, sitting on her desk. "Well, I have to begin at the beginning and tell you how I found out." "Is it tragic?" Jackie asked. "Yes, it is, and Percy was a heroine." "What did she do?" "Stop asking questions and I'll tell you!" Erna exclaimed in exasperation. "First of all, I had perfectly wonderful holidays. I stayed most of the time with a nurse from the hospital. My mother and father are getting a divorce and I'm glad." And she stared at Flip and Jackie defiantly. "Oh, Erna," Jackie cried. "Well, mutti's not a bit like your mother," Erna said, "and she's never liked me. But my father was just wonderful and Marianne, she's the nurse, was awfully nice, too, and took me to the movies when she was off duty. And she told me my father was a great surgeon and a wonderful man and I saw an operation and I didn't faint or anything and my father told me he was very happy I was going to be a doctor and he'd help me all he could. And he talked to me lots and lots and said he was sorry he never had time to write me or anything but he loved me just the same and he'd try to write me more. And then he told me he and mutti disagreed about many things and they disagreed about the world and Germany and people and things in general. They'd disagreed about the war and the Nazis only father couldn't say anything because of my brothers and mutti and me and everything. He said all the injured and wounded people needed to be taken care of and it wasn't their fault, mostly, not the fault of--what did he call them? the--the little people. So he felt all right taking care of them and he was glad I was here at school because he thought it was the best place in the world for me right now. And it was really wonderful, kids, because he'd always been so kind of stern and everything and I'd never really known him before or felt that I had a father the way you two do, and now I have, even if mutti still doesn't love me."