But her triumphs were short-lived. An elaborate educational machine equipped with expert professors for every subject, with a carefully thought-out programme, in which every hour of the day is rigidly mapped out, cannot be stayed for the whims of one obstructive woman obviously prejudiced against German institutions. The frequent skirmishes had developed into something of the nature of a campaign. It is not good for children to be, as they frequently are even in less illustrious circles, the centre of warring elements; so at last the inevitable happened, and with much reluctance “Nanna’s” dismissal to England, of course with an ample pension, was finally decided upon. When I first made her acquaintance in Homburg her influence was a waning one; her autocratic rule was loosening--her departure delayed only by the beneficent hand of Majesty, which shrank from the final severance from a faithful if somewhat injudicious servant. “Nanna” subsequently asserted that I had been specially deputed as an instrument of Providence to console her during those last few weeks; and though I myself am not personally conscious of any qualifications for the office of consoler, I may at any rate lay claim to the credit of having been a very efficient safety-valve for her emotions, which poured over me in a constant flood of retrospect and admonition. She was uncompromisingly British, in spite of her thirteen years’ residence abroad. It was at once her strength and her undoing. She refused to strike her flag to any mere lady-in-waiting or German _Ober-Gouvernante_, and maintained an inflexible principle of behaviour in situations where the tact and pliability indispensable to diplomatic relations were most needed. “Do you think I was going to stand her putting the thermometer in the bath-water to see how hot it was?” she asked me indignantly, referring to the absent _Ober-Gouvernante_; and I agreed that it was the kind of thing that no one could be expected to bear. She was a good faithful soul, rather crabbed and cross sometimes, and she inspired in the German footmen and housemaids under her orders a good deal of respect and fear, and also, as I subsequently discovered, a certain amount of affection, such as sterling qualities will always earn for themselves somehow; and if the German associations modified nothing in her character, the same cannot be said of her speech, which, while still remaining British in outward form, became in the course of years somewhat warped from its original purity. “At Christmas,” she told me once, when showing the gifts that the Empress had made to her, “last year I became a set of teaspoons, and the year before I became a lovely silver teapot.” She had obviously confused the German word _bekommen_, “to get,” with the similar-sounding but different-meaning English word.