“_Whither thou goest, I will go. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God._” For days after that Mona finds herself singing as she goes about her work. And at night, when she is alone, she is always thinking of her forthcoming life in Oskar’s home. She can scarcely remember her own mother, except that she was an invalid for years, but she sees herself nursing Oskar’s mother, now that she is old and has lost her daughter. “I mustn’t go empty-handed, though,” she thinks. That brings back the memory of Long John Corlett and his threat of “putting the law” on her. It must have been stuff and nonsense about the dilapidations eating up the stock, but she will see an advocate and have things settled up immediately. “I’m afraid the man is right, miss.” It is the advocate whom Mona is consulting. “It was a bad bargain your poor father made with the Government, and the only people likely to profit by it are the landlord and the incoming tenant.” “Then what do you advise me to do, sir?” “Sell up your stock, have the dilapidations valued, pay the money due, and start afresh on whatever is left.” “Do it for me at once, please,” says Mona, and she sets off home with an easy, if not a happy, mind. But hardly has she got there and changed into her dairy clothes, and begun on her evening milking in the cow-house, with the watery winter sun coming in on her through the open door, when she sees Oskar approaching with a look that strikes to her heart. His face is white, almost ghastly, and he is walking like an old man, bent and feeble. “What has happened?” “There! What do you think of that?” he says, and with a grating laugh he gives her a letter. “Is it from your mother?” “Look at it.” “Is she refusing to receive me?” “Read it. It’s written in English--for your benefit, apparently.” Mona reads: “OSKAR,--The contents of your letter have distressed me beyond measure. That a son of mine should think of marrying an Englishwoman--one of the vile and wicked race that killed his sister--is the most shocking thing that has ever happened to me in my life.” There is more of the same kind--that if Oskar attempts to bring his Englishwoman to Germany his mother will refuse to receive her; that if she did receive her every self-respecting German woman would cry shame on her and shun her house for ever; that the feeling in Germany against the abominable English is so bitter, because of their brutal methods of warfare and their barbarous ideas of peace (starving hundreds of German children by their infamous blockade, drowning German sailors under the sea in their submarines, burning German airmen alive in the air, and now ruining everybody by crushing demands for reparations which will leave Germany a nation of beggars), that no decent house would shelter any of them.