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What came next was a German family, the continental acquaintances of the

wife of one of Fyne's colleagues in the Holances was dispatched to them without much reflection As

it was not considered absolutely necessary to take theirl to be specially cheerful nor

were they discolances

The German woman was quite ordinary; there were two boys to look after;

they were ordinary, too, I presume; and Flora, I understand, was very

attentive to the it must have been by

inspiration alone, for she certainly knew nothing of teaching But it

was mostly "conversation" which was de with two sularly, industriously,

conscientiously, in order to keep herself alive in the world which held

for her the past we know and the future of an even more undesirable

quality--seems to me a very fantastic co, she wrote, ed by her task

She had learned to "converse" all day long, mechanically, absently, as if

in a trance An uneasy trance it must have been! Her worst , shut up in her own little roo up slowly till she started into the full

consciousness of her position, like a person waking up in contact with

so ato hide somewhere

At this period of her existence Flora de Barral used to write to Mrs

Fyne not regularly but fairly often I don't kno long she would

have gone on "conversing" and, incidentally, helping to supervise the

beautifully stocked linen closets of that well-to-do German household, if

the man of it had not developed in the intervals of his avocations (he