o to war!

"Somebody should be made to pay dear for this," tearfully declared a
doctor's wife. "This is very bad for nervous women."

The first news had come on the 9.40 train, and there was no more until
the 6.20 train when the men came down from the city; but they could
throw no light on it either. The only serious face that I saw was that
of our French neighbor, who hurried away from the station without
speaking to any one. When I spoke to him the next day, he answered me
in French, and I knew his thoughts were far away.

The days that followed were days of anxious questioning. The men
brought back stories of the great crowds that surged through the
streets blocking the traffic in front of the newspaper offices reading
the bulletins, while the bands played patriotic airs; of the misguided
German who shouted, "Hoch der Kaiser!" and narrowly escaped the fury
of the crowd.

We held a monster meeting one night at "Windwhistle Cottage," and we all
made speeches, although none of us knew what to say. The general tone of
the speeches was to hold steady,--not to be panicky,--Britannia rules
the waves,--it would all be over soon,--Dr. Robertson Nicholl and
Kitchener could settle anything!

The crowd around the dancing pavilion began to dwindle in the
evenings--that is, of the older people. The children still danced,
happily; fluffy-haired little girls, with "headache" bands around
their pretty heads, did the fox-trot and the one-step with boys of
their own age and older, but the older people talked together in
excited groups.

Every night when the train came in the crowds waited in tense anxiety
to get the papers, and when they were handed out, read them in
silence, a silence which was ominous. Political news was relegated to
the third page and was not read until we got back to the veranda. In
these days nothing mattered; the baker came late; the breakfast dishes
were not washed sometimes until they were needed for lunch, for the
German maids and the English maids discussed the situation out under
the trees. Mary, whose last name sounded like a tray of dishes
falling, the fine-looking Polish woman who brought us vegetables every
morning, arrived late and in tears, for she said, "This would be bad
times for Poland--always it was bad times for Poland, and I will never
see my mother again."

A shadow had fallen on us, a shadow that darkened the children's
play. Now they made forts of sand, and bored holes in the ends of