"I hadn't thought of it. Do you think I should?"

Quite unexpectedly Mr. Travers patted her shoulder.

"My dear child," he said, "now and then I find somebody who helps to

revive my faith in human nature. Thank you."

Sara Lee did not understand. The touch on the shoulder had made her

think suddenly of Uncle James, and her chin quivered.

"I'm just a little frightened," she said in a small voice.

"Twenty pounds!" repeated Mr. Travers to himself. "Twenty pounds!"

And aloud: "Of course you speak French?"

"Very little. I've had six lessons, and I can count--some."

The sense of unreality which the twenty pounds had roused in Mr. Travers'

cautious British mind grew. No money, no French, no objective, just a

great human desire to be useful in her own small way--this was a new type

to him. What a sporting chance this frail bit of a girl was taking! And

he noticed now something that had escaped him before--a dauntlessness,

a courage of the spirit rather than of the body, that was in the very

poise of her head.

"I'm not afraid about the language," she was saying. "I have a phrase

book. And a hungry man, maybe sick or wounded, can understand a bowl of

soup in any language, I should think. And I can cook!"

It was a perplexed and thoughtful Mr. Travers who sipped his

Scotch-and-soda in the smoking room before retiring, he took the problem

to bed with him and woke up in the night saying: "Twenty pounds!

Good God!"

In the morning they left the ship. He found Sara Lee among the K's,

waiting to have her passport examined, and asked her where she was

stopping in London. She had read somewhere of Claridge's--in a novel

probably.

"I shouldn't advise Claridge's," he said, reflecting rather grimly on

the charges of that very exclusive hotel. "Suppose you let me make a

suggestion."

So he wrote out the name of a fine old English house on Trafalgar

Square, where she could stay until she went to France. There would be

the matter of a passport to cross the Channel. It might take a day or

two. Perhaps he could help her. He would give himself the pleasure of

calling on her very soon.

Sara Lee got on the train and rode up to London. She said to herself

over and over: "This is England. I am really in England." But it did

not remove the sense of unreality. Even the English grass, bright green

in midwinter, only added to the sense of unreality.




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