rushing towards the German city, she began to think.



4


It was a fool's errand. . . . To undertake to go to the German school
and teach . . . to be going there . . . with nothing to give. The
moment would come when there would be a class sitting round a table
waiting for her to speak. She imagined one of the rooms at the old
school, full of scornful girls. . . . How was English taught? How did
you begin? English grammar . . . in German? Her heart beat in her
throat. She had never thought of that . . . the rules of English
grammar? Parsing and analysis. . . . Anglo-Saxon prefixes and suffixes
. . . gerundial infinitive. . . . It was too late to look anything up.
Perhaps there would be a class to-morrow. . . . The German lessons at
school had been dreadfully good. . . . Fraulein's grave face . . . her
perfect knowledge of every rule . . . her clear explanations in English
. . . her examples. . . . All these things were there, in English
grammar. . . . And she had undertaken to teach them and could not even
speak German.

Monsieur . . . had talked French all the time . . . dictees . . .
lectures . . . Le Conscrit . . . Waterloo . . . La Maison Deserte . . .
his careful voice reading on and on . . . until the room disappeared. .
. . She must do that for her German girls. Read English to them and
make them happy. . . . But first there must be verbs . . . there had
been cahiers of them . . . first, second, third conjugation. . . . It
was impudence, an impudent invasion . . . the dreadful clever, foreign