Christopher and Columbus. Elizabeth von ArnimЧитать онлайн книгу.
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 mouths and chins, it was irresistible. Clearly they were foreigners, and equally clearly they were not Italians, or Russians, or French. Within a week the nurses spoke of them in private as Fritz and Franz. Within a fortnight a deputation of staff sisters went to the matron and asked, on patriotic grounds, for the removal of the Misses Twinkler. The matron, with the fear of Uncle Arthur in her heart, for he was altogether the biggest subscriber, sharply sent the deputation about its business; and being a matron of great competence and courage she would probably have continued to be able to force the new probationers upon the nurses if it had not been for the inability, which was conspicuous, of the younger Miss Twinkler to acquire efficiency.
In vain did Anna-Rose try to make up for Anna-Felicitas's shortcomings by a double zeal, a double willingness and cheerfulness. Anna-Felicitas was a born dreamer, a born bungler with her hands and feet. She not only never from first to last succeeded in filling the thirty hot-water bottles, which were her care, in thirty minutes, which was her duty, but every time she met a pail standing about she knocked against it and it fell over. Patients and nurses watched her approach with apprehension. Her ward was in a constant condition of flood.
"It's because she's thinking of something else," Anna-Rose tried eagerly to explain to the indignant sister-in-charge.
"Thinking of something else!" echoed the sister.
"She reads, you see, a lot—whenever she gets the chance she reads—"
"Reads!" echoed the sister.
"And then, you see, she gets thinking—"
"Thinking! Reading doesn't make me think."
"With much regret," wrote the matron to Aunt Alice, "I am obliged to dismiss your younger niece, Nurse Twinkler II. She has no vocation for nursing. On the other hand, your elder niece is shaping well and I shall be pleased to keep her on."
"But I can't stop on," Anna-Rose said to the matron when she announced these decisions to her. "I can't be separated from my sister. I'd like very much to know what would become of that poor child without me to look after her. You forget I'm the eldest."
The matron put down her pen—she was a woman who made many notes—and stared at Nurse Twinkler. Not in this fashion did her nurses speak to her. But Anna-Rose, having been brought up in a spot remote from everything except love and laughter, had all the fearlessness of ignorance; and in her extreme youth and smallness, with her eyes shining and her face heated she appeared to the matron rather like an indignant kitten.
"Very well," said the matron gravely, suppressing a smile. "One should always do what one considers one's first duty."
So the Twinklers went back to Uncle Arthur, and the matron was greatly relieved, for she certainly didn't want them, and Uncle Arthur said Damn.
"Arthur," gently reproved his wife.
"I say Damn and I mean Damn," said Uncle Arthur. "What the hell can we—"
"Arthur," said his wife.
"I say, what the hell can we do with a couple of Germans? If people wouldn't swallow them last winter are they going to swallow them any better now? God, what troubles a man lets himself in for when he marries!"
"I do beg you, Arthur, not to use those coarse words," said Aunt Alice, tears in her gentle eyes.
There followed a period of desperate exertion on the part of Aunt Alice. She answered advertisements and offered the twins as nursery governesses, as cheerful companions, as mothers' helps, even as orphans willing to be adopted. She relinquished every claim on salaries, she offered them for nothing, and at last she offered them accompanied by a bonus. "Their mother was English. They are quite English," wrote Aunt Alice innumerable times in innumerable letters. "I feel bound, however, to tell you that they once had a German father, but of course it was through no fault of their own," etc., etc. Aunt Alice's hand ached with writing letters; and any solution of the problem that might possibly have been arrived at came to nothing because Anna-Rose would not be separated from Anna-Felicitas, and if it was difficult to find anybody who would take on one German nobody at all could be found to take on two.
Meanwhile Uncle Arthur grew nightly more dreadful in bed. Aunt Alice was at her wits' end, and took to crying helplessly. The twins racked their brains to find a way out, quite as anxious to relieve Uncle Arthur of their presence as he was to be relieved. If only they could be independent, do something, work, go as housemaids—anything.
They concocted an anonymous-advertisement and secretly sent it to The Times, clubbing their pocket-money together to pay for it. The advertisement was:
Energetic Sisters of belligerent ancestry but unimpeachable sympathies wish for any sort of work consistent with respectability. No objection to being demeaned.
Anna-Felicitas inquired what that last word meant for it was Anna-Rose's word, and Anna-Rose explained that it meant not minding things like being housemaids. "Which we don't," said Anna-Rose. "Upper and Under. I'll be Upper, of course, because I'm the eldest."
Anna-Felicitas suggested putting in what it meant then, for she regarded it with some doubt, but Anna-Rose, it being her word, liked it, and explained that it Put a whole sentence into a nut-shell, and wouldn't change it.
No one answered this advertisement except a society in London for helping alien enemies in distress.
"Charity," said Anna-Rose, turning up her nose.
"And fancy thinking us enemies," said Anna-Felicitas, "Us. While mummy—" Her eyes filled with tears. She kept them back, however, behind convenient long eye-lashes.
Then they saw an advertisement in the front page of The Times that they instantly answered without saying a word to Aunt Alice. The advertisement was:
Slightly wounded Officer would be glad to find intelligent and
interesting companion who can drive a 14 h.p. Humber. Emoluments
by arrangement.
"We'll tell him we're intelligent and interesting," said Anna-Rose, eagerly.
"Yes—who knows if we wouldn't be really, if we were given a chance?" said Anna-Felicitas, quite flushed with excitement.
"And if he engages us we'll take him on in turns, so that the emoluments won't have to be doubled."
"Yes—because he mightn't like paying twice over."
"Yes—and while the preliminaries are being settled we could be learning to drive Uncle Arthur's car."
"Yes—except that it's a Daimler, and aren't they different?"
"Yes—but only about the same difference as there is between a man and a woman. A man and a woman are both human beings, you know. And Daimlers and Humbers are both cars."
"I see," said Anna-Felicitas; but she didn't.
They wrote an enthusiastic answer that very day.
The only thing they were in doubt about, they explained toward the end of the fourth sheet, when they had got to politenesses and were requesting the slightly wounded officer to allow them to express their sympathy with his wounds, was that they had not yet had an opportunity of driving a Humber car, but that this opportunity, of course, would be instantly provided by his engaging them. Also, would he kindly tell them if it was a male companion he desired to have, because if so it was very unfortunate, for neither of them were males, but quite the contrary.
They got no answer to this for three weeks, and had given up all hope and come to the depressing conclusion that they must have betrayed their want of intelligence and interestingness right away, when one day a letter came from General Headquarters in France, addressed To Both the Miss Twinklers, and it was a long letter, pages long, from the slightly wounded officer, telling them he had been