and protecting the two poor aliens till happier days should return. If
there were any good stuff in Arthur would he not recognize, however
angry he might be, that she was doing at least a Christian thing? But
this illumination would soon die out. Her comforts choked it. She was
too well-fed. After twenty years of it, she no longer had the figure for
lean and dangerous enterprises.

And having definitely chosen Arthur, she concentrated what she had of
determination in finding an employment for her nieces that would remove
them beyond the range of his growing wrath. She found it in a children's
hospital as far away as Worcestershire, a hospital subscribed to very
largely by Arthur, for being a good man he subscribed to hospitals. The
matron objected, but Aunt Alice overrode the matron; and from January to
April Uncle Arthur's house was pure from Germans.

Then they came back again.

It had been impossible to keep them. The nurses wouldn't work with them.
The sick children had relapses when they discovered who it was who
brought them their food, and cried for their mothers. It had been
arranged between Aunt Alice and the matron that the unfortunate
nationality of her nieces should not be mentioned. They were just to be
Aunt Alice's nieces, the Miss Twinklers,--("We will leave out the von,"
said Aunt Alice, full of unnatural cunning. "They have a von, you know,
poor things--such a very labelling thing to have. But Twinkler without
it might quite well be English. Who can possibly tell? It isn't as
though they had had some shocking name like Bismarck.")

Nothing, however, availed against the damning evidence of the rolled
r's. Combined with the silvery fair hair and the determined little