er the lips, the viler the
blasphemy.

She was not able to restrain herself from denouncing them with all her
ferocity. She towered over them and cried out upon them: "You wicked,
wicked little beasts, how dare you put such loathsome words into a
prayer! God must have gasped with horror in heaven at the shame of it.
Wherever did you get so hateful an idea?"

"Wicked your own self!" the boy snapped back. "Fraeulein read it in the
paper about the old boat, and she walked up and down the room like
what you do, and she said, '_Ach, unser_ Dott--how dood you are to us,
to make sink dat _Lusitania_!'"

He was going on to describe her ecstasy, but Marie Louise broke in:
"It's Fraeulein's work, is it? I might have known that! Oh, the fiend,
the harpy!"

The boy did not know what a harpy was, but he knew that his beloved
Fraeulein was being called something, and he struck at Marie Louise
fiercely, kicked at her shins and tried to bite her hands, screaming:
"You shall not call our own precious Fraeulein names. Harpy, your own
self!"

And the little girl struck and scratched and made a curdled face and
echoed, "Harpy, your own self!"

It hurt Marie Louise so extravagantly to be hated by these irascible
cherubs that her anger vanished in regret. She pleaded: "But, my
darlings, you don't know what you are saying. The _Lusitania_ was a
beautiful ship--"

The boy, Victor, was loyal always to his own: "She wasn't as beautiful
as my yacht what I sail in the Round Pond."

Marie Louise condescended to argue: "Oh yes, she was! She was a great
ship, noble like Saint Paul's Cathedral, and she was loaded with
passengers, men and women and children: and then suddenly she was
ripped open and sunk, and little children like you were thrown into
the water, into the deep, deep, deep ocean. And the big waves tore
them from their mothers' arms and ran off with them, choking and
strangling them and dragging them down and down--forever down."

She was dizzied by the horde of visions mobbing her brain. Then the
onrush of horror was checked abruptly as she saw the supercilious lad
regarding her frenzy calmly. His comment was:

"It served 'em jolly well right for bein' on 'at old boat."

Marie Louise almost swooned with dread of such a soul. She shrank from
the boy and groaned, "Oh, you toad, you little toad!"

He was frightened a little by her disgust, and he took refuge in a
higher authority. "Fraeulein told us. And she knows."

The bi