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always imagined Calvinists—surely the Swiss National Church was Calvinist?—to be terrific theologians, but completely
bornés
and inhibited otherwise; and here she was, being utterly stumped on politics and literature by these same supposedly rigid people. Having piled her basket with spinach, she took it in to Germaine. In the wash-house were two more of the big linen-baskets, full of clean wet sheets and towels. ‘Are these to go out?’ she asked.
    â€˜Yes—but I will take them,’ her hostess replied.
    â€˜What rubbish!’ Julia exclaimed. ‘Henriette!’ she called through the window, ‘Come and help me out with your
linge
!’ Turning, she surprised a rather startled and happy smile on her hostess’s face. When Henriette camein they carried out the two heavy baskets, and pegged the wet linen in the sun and breeze along the lines beside the lawn.
    â€˜Rilke my elbow!’ Julia thought to herself. ‘Why not do one’s own
work?
’ She was becoming quite a partisan of her beautiful hostess. Henriette, as they stretched out sheets, continued to talk, now about her family, and from her lively chatter Julia learned yet other aspects of Swiss life. The Iron-workers’ Guild in Berne had given Henriette a small
dot
when she married, and were going to do the same presently for Marguerite, who was already
fiancée;
and they were helping to pay for Marcel’s education, as they had done for that of his two elder brothers. Julia was much more interested in this than in Rilke. Were there still Guilds in Switzerland? she wanted to know. Henriette was a little vague.
    â€˜Well at least there were, and there are funds still existing, to help those whose families have always belonged to the Guild. It is an hereditary thing—for of course Papa is not an iron-worker,’ Henriette said, with a disarming girlish giggle. ‘But he is really a Bernois, and his family have belonged to this Guild for—oh, for centuries; so they help with the boys’ education, and our dowries. It is very convenient,
en tout cas
, for we are so many, and Papa and Maman are not rich.’
    However, there was Kirsch, locally made and excellent, with the coffee after supper, before the Pastor bore Julia off to his study, where a business-like desk with a typewriter and two shabby leather armchairs were looked down upon by shelves-ful of books going up to the ceiling: masses of theology, but also plenty of modern stuff in French and German, and in English too—Winston Churchill, Osbert Sitwell, Virginia Woolf, and of course Galsworthy, for whom Continentals have such a surprising enthusiasm. ‘But this Miss Burnett—why has she such
réclame?’
the Pastor enquired, fingering a row of modern novels. ‘Clever dialogue, yes; but it is needlessly confusing if one does not know who speaks. And it seems to me that she has little to say except that children often disagree withtheir parents, and that governesses may be more intelligent than their employers! This last the Brontës told us long ago, and with greater simplicity—and genius.’
    Julia already delighted in the Pastor, and would have asked nothing better than to spend the evening discussing books with him, but the urgency of Colin’s letter was strong on her; also she had been greatly struck by the welcome and hospitality so freely shown her, without any explanation of her presence being given. She agreed hastily about Miss Burnett, and then pulled out of her bag the copy of Mr. Thalassides’ will, and the letters from Aglaia’s lawyers and bankers. ‘As she is still technically “an infant”, and as I was coming out to Switzerland anyhow, I was asked to look into it,’ she said, realising how lame the words sounded even as she spoke them.
    M. de Ritter drew up one of the old armchairs for her; then he spread the papers out on his desk, and studied