for any man to be. I am an old
maid and an old maid has to be independent or she will be squashed out.
But if I had been a married woman, Mrs. Dr. dear, I would have been
meek and humble. It is my opinion that this Sophia of Greece is a minx."

Susan was furious when the news came that Venizelos had met with
defeat. "I could spank Constantine and skin him alive afterwards, that
I could," she exclaimed bitterly.

"Oh, Susan, I'm surprised at you," said the doctor, pulling a long
face. "Have you no regard for the proprieties? Skin him alive by all
means but omit the spanking."

"If he had been well spanked in his younger days he might have more
sense now," retorted Susan. "But I suppose princes are never spanked,
more is the pity. I see the Allies have sent him an ultimatum. I could
tell them that it will take more than ultimatums to skin a snake like
Constantine. Perhaps the Allied blockade will hammer sense into his
head; but that will take some time I am thinking, and in the meantime
what is to become of poor Serbia?"

They saw what became of Serbia, and during the process Susan was hardly
to be lived with. In her exasperation she abused everything and
everybody except Kitchener, and she fell upon poor President Wilson
tooth and claw.

"If he had done his duty and gone into the war long ago we should not
have seen this mess in Serbia," she avowed.

"It would be a serious thing to plunge a great country like the United
States, with its mixed population, into the war, Susan," said the
doctor, who sometimes came to the defence of the President, not because
he thought Wilson needed it especially, but from an unholy love of
baiting Susan.

"Maybe, doctor dear--maybe! But that makes me think of the old story of
the girl who told her grandmother she was going to be married. 'It is a
solemn thing to be married,' said the old lady. 'Yes, but it is a
solemner thing not to be,' said the girl. And I can testify to that out
of my own experience, doctor dear. And I think it is a solemner thing
for the Yankees that they have kept out of the war than it would have
been if they had gone into it. However, though I do not know much about
them, I am of the opinion that we will see them starting something yet,
Woodrow Wilson or no Woodrow Wilson, when they get it into their heads
that this war is not a correspondence school. They will not," said
Susan, energetically waving a saucepan with one hand and a soup ladle
with the other,