Germans -- Foreign countries -- Fiction; Sisters -- Fiction; Twins -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
It was final this time, for the two alien enemies once out of it would
not be let into England again till after the war. The enemies themselves
knew it was final; and the same knowledge that made Uncle Arthur feel so
pleasant as he walked home across his park from golf to tea that for a
moment he was actually of a mind to kiss Aunt Alice when he got in, and
perhaps even address her in the language of resuscitated passion, which
in Uncle Arthur's mouth was Old Girl,--an idea he abandoned, however, in
case it should make her self-satisfied and tiresome--the same knowledge
that produced these amiable effects in Uncle Arthur, made his alien
nieces cling very close together as they leaned over the side of the
_St. Luke_ hungrily watching the people on the wharf.
For they loved England. They loved it with the love of youth whose
enthusiasms have been led by an adored teacher always in one direction.
And they were leaving that adored teacher, their mother, in England. It
seemed like losing her a second time to go away, so far away, and leave
her there. It was nonsense, they knew, to feel like that. She was with
them just the same; wherever they went now she would be with them, and
they could hear her saying at that very moment, "Little darlings,
_don't_ cry...." But it was a gloomy, drizzling afternoon, the sort of
afternoon anybody might be expected to cry on, and not one of the people
waving handkerchiefs were waving handkerchiefs to them.
"We ought to have hired somebody," thought Anna-Rose, eyeing the
handkerchiefs with miserable little eyes.
"I believe I've gone and caught a cold," remarked Anna-Felicitas in her
gentle, staid voice, for she was having a good deal of bother with her
eyes and her nose, and could no longer conceal the fact that she was
sniffing.
Anna-Rose discreetly didn't look at her. Then she suddenly whipped out
her handkerchief and waved it violently.
Anna-Felicitas forgot her eyes and nose and craned her head forward.
"Who are you waving to?" she asked, astonished.
"Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose, waving, "Good-bye! Good-bye!"
"Who? Where? Who are you talking to?" asked Anna-Felicitas. "Has any one
come to see us off?"
"Good-bye! Good-bye!" cried Anna-Rose.
The figures on the wharf were getting smaller, but not until they had
faded into a blur did Anna-Rose leave off waving. Then she turned round
and put her arm through Anna-Felicitas's and held on to her very tight
for a minute.
"There wasn't anybody," she said. "Of course there wasn't. But do you
suppose I was going to have us _looking_ like people who aren't seen
off?"
And she drew Anna-Felicitas away to the chairs, and when they were
safely in them and rolled up to their chins in the rug, she added, "That
man--" and then stopped. "What man?"
"Standing just behind us--"
"Was there a man?" asked Anna-Felicitas, who never saw men any more than
she, in her brief career at the hospital, had seen pails.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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