"She really could not do better for that child than if she had raised a
baker's dozen, Mrs. Dr. dear," Susan had avowed solemnly. "Little did I
ever expect it of her on the day she landed here with that soup tureen."

CHAPTER XIII

A SLICE OF HUMBLE PIE

"I am very much afraid, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan, who had been on a
pilgrimage to the station with some choice bones for Dog Monday, "that
something terrible has happened. Whiskers-on-the-moon came off the
train from Charlottetown and he was looking pleased. I do not remember
that I ever saw him with a smile on in public before. Of course he may
have just been getting the better of somebody in a cattle deal but I
have an awful presentiment that the Huns have broken through somewhere."

Perhaps Susan was unjust in connecting Mr. Pryor's smile with the
sinking of the Lusitania, news of which circulated an hour later when
the mail was distributed. But the Glen boys turned out that night in a
body and broke all his windows in a fine frenzy of indignation over the
Kaiser's doings.

"I do not say they did right and I do not say they did wrong," said
Susan, when she heard of it. "But I will say that I wouldn't have
minded throwing a few stones myself. One thing is
certain--Whiskers-on-the-moon said in the post office the day the news
came, in the presence of witnesses, that folks who could not stay home
after they had been warned deserved no better fate. Norman Douglas is
fairly foaming at the mouth over it all. 'If the devil doesn't get
those men who sunk the Lusitania then there is no use in there being a
devil,' he was shouting in Carter's store last night. Norman Douglas
always has believed that anybody who opposed him was on the side of the
devil, but a man like that is bound to be right once in a while. Bruce
Meredith is worrying over the babies who were drowned. And it seems he
prayed for something very special last Friday night and didn't get it,
and was feeling quite disgruntled over it. But when he heard about the
Lusitania he told his mother that he understood now why God didn't
answer his prayer--He was too busy attending to the souls of all the
people who went down on the Lusitania. That child's brain is a hundred
years older than his body, Mrs. Dr. dear. As for the Lusitania, it is
an awful occurrence, whatever way you look at it. But Woodrow Wilson is
going to write a note about it, so why worry? A pretty president!" and
Susan banged her pots about w